An FIR has been lodged against six policemen, including the then Station House Officer of Nahtaur police station – Rajesh Singh Solanki, over the death of 20-year-old Mohammad Suleiman in UP’s Bijnor district during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
Suleiman was a final-year under-graduate student who was staying with his maternal uncle in Noida to prepare for the UPSC exams and had come to Nahtaur since he was down with fever.
His family has alleged that he was returning from a mosque after offering namaz when the police picked him up, took him into a lane near a madrasa, and shot him.
The new SHO, Satya Prakash Singh, told the media that apart from Solanki, local outpost in-charge Ashish Tomar, constable Mohit Kumar and three other “unidentified” policemen have been named in the FIR filed by Suleiman’s brother Shoaib.
Singh said the FIR has been registered under IPC Sections 302 (murder), 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with deadly weapon) and 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object).
Solanki has now been transferred to the District Crime Record Bureau (DCRB).
Sanjeev Tyagi, Superintendent of Police, Bijnor, had confirmed to The Indian Express on 23rd December that Suleiman had died after he was shot by constable Mohit Kumar in “self-defence”.
“One cartridge was retrieved from Suleiman’s body. The ballistic report confirms that this was shot from the service pistol of Mohit Kumar. Mohit Kumar also suffered a bullet injury. The bullet taken from Mohit Kumar’s stomach was found to be shot from a country-made weapon,” Tyagi had said.
However, the police had not found any weapon on Suleiman.
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