Delhi HC allows CBI to close missing JNU student’s case

new delhi — The Delhi High Court on Monday allowed the CBI plea seeking permission to file its closure report into the disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed, a Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student who went missing from here in October 2016.

A bench of Justice S. Muralidhar and Justice Vinod Goel allowed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) plea while rejecting Ahmed’s mother Fatima Nafees’ habeas corpus plea for an SIT probe.

In its last hearing, the CBI counsel told the bench that the agency has analysed “everything” related to the matter, and wanted to file a final report seeking to close the case before the trial court concerned.

The bench appreciated the CBI for doing every effort to trace Ahmed and said the probe agency was “not tardy and slow in the investigation”.

“This court has monitored the investigation of the CBI up to the stage where the CBI is in a position to file a report before the concerned criminal court. What should happen hereafter is for the criminal court concerned to decide and not this court,” the court said.

The court directed Nafees to raise all contentions available to her in accordance with law before

the criminal court concerned after the filing of the closure report by the agency.

Earlier, on court’s direction the

case was transferred from the Delhi Police to the CBI on Nafees’ plea.

Nafees had sought a Special Investigation Team (SIT) — comprising non-CBI official — to further probe her son’s disappearance from a JNU hostel in the intervening night of October 14 and 15.

But the court declined the plea to constitute an SIT and monitor its work.

The bench did not agree with the petitioner that the CBI had not acted fairly or that it had been under any influence or political compulsions in its decision to file a closure report.

“However, the court would not like to say anything further in this regard because it will be for the court concerned to decide whether on the material placed before it, the CBI closure report should be accepted,” the court said.

“That will be a decision to be taken independently by the court concerned (trial court), uninfluenced by what this court may have observed thus far in these proceedings.”

Ahmed, 27, an MSc first-year student, was reported missing almost two years back after an alleged scuffle with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) members, student body affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The ABVP has, however, denied any involvement. —