Lest We Forget: Six Years After Delhi Carnage, Questions of Justice Still Haunt Survivors

Six years after the February 2020 northeast Delhi communal violence left 53 people dead and hundreds injured, survivors, activists and political leaders gathered at the Press Club of India  under the banner “Lest We Forget.” The event, organised by Karwan-e-Mohabbat and moderated by activist Harsh Mander, sought to revisit what speakers described as an unfinished struggle for justice.

The 2020 violence erupted on 23 February in areas such as Jaffrabad, Maujpur and Chand Bagh amid protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and anxieties over the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the National Population Register (NPR). A sit-in near the Jaffrabad metro station became a flashpoint, spiralling into days of arson, stone-pelting and shootings. Over 2,000 arrests were made and nearly 100 FIRs registered. In subsequent years, several courts criticised the Delhi Police’s investigations, pointing to lapses and inconsistencies.

Speakers including CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat, former Supreme Court judge Madan B. Lokur, senior advocate and former Union minister Salman Khurshid, Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha, activist John Dayal and filmmaker Deb Mukherji reflected on what they called systemic failures in investigation, prosecution and rehabilitation.

Four short films were also screened in between the discussion. One featured testimonies of victims from northeast Delhi, recounting the violence and its aftermath. Another focused on compensation claims that remain unpaid or partially settled. A third highlighted the prolonged incarceration of those accused under stringent laws, including student leaders such as Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam. The final film documented instances of interfaith solidarity with Hindu neighbours sheltering Muslim families and vice versa, during the worst days of the violence.

Question of Justice and Accountability 

If remembrance was the emotional core of the evening, accountability was its sharpest edge.

Lokur criticised the legal process that has unfolded since 2020, calling the failure to hold investigators accountable “one of the biggest failures” of the courts in Delhi.

Over the past six years, he noted, dozens of cases have been filed and decided, yet the conviction rate remains strikingly low. Courts themselves, he pointed out, have repeatedly criticised the police for shoddy investigations, including producing witnesses who were allegedly not present at the scene. “The police has been accused of fabricating witnesses… bringing in false witnesses,” he said, questioning why repeated judicial observations have not led to consequences for those responsible.

The absence of accountability, Lokur warned, sends a dangerous signal. If investigators face no repercussions for flawed or fabricated evidence, “this gives a sort of feeling to the police that if we have got away in this case, we will probably get away with it in the next case.”

His concerns extended beyond investigation to procedure. Citing the case of former JNU student leader Umar Khalid, who has spent nearly six years in jail, Lokur underscored delays that have stalled trials before they even begin. Despite the filing of voluminous charge sheets running into thousands of pages, charges have not yet been framed.

 “Why should the accused persons remain in jail until you complete your investigations?” he asked.

The demand for institutional accountability was echoed by  Karat, who shifted the focus to what she described as a larger structural gap: the absence of an official commission of inquiry into the violence.

Unlike earlier episodes of communal violence, including the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, no formal commission has been constituted for the 2020 riots, she said. In that vacuum, a particular narrative, including allegations of a sweeping “larger conspiracy”,  solidified early and went largely unchallenged. “Based on that chronology, the entire structure of responsibility… was fitted together,” she said.

Karat cited recent figures suggesting that out of 116 decided cases, around 93 have resulted in acquittals, including murder cases.

Beyond courtrooms, the former Rajya Sabha member emphasised the continuing social and economic toll on affected families. Of the 54 families her committee remains in touch with, including one death not officially registered, 64 children are currently receiving student stipends.

“Out of the 54 deaths, all but one were men, and in all but five cases they were the primary earning members,” she said. The result, she noted, is that most of these are now female-headed households navigating insecurity and fear. Compensation packages, she argued, lack any meaningful long-term rehabilitation component.

Khurshid reflected on something more intangible: the fading of public memory.

“With the passage of time, that relationship with pain reduces little by little, the pain becomes distant,” he said. Gatherings like this, he suggested, serve to remind participants that the suffering has not disappeared, only moved out of sight.

But he posed a difficult question to those assembled: how does this conversation travel beyond sympathetic rooms? “We can gather here many times, but how will our message reach beyond this room?” he asked. The struggle for justice, he said, is not only legal or political but civilisational, requiring a new vocabulary capable of engaging those who may not already share the same language of rights and dissent.

Invoking Mahatma Gandhi’s method of dialogue even with adversaries, Khurshid suggested that winning hearts may be as crucial as winning cases. “We must search for a new vocabulary, a new way of expression,” he said, one that ensures the demand for justice does not remain confined to small islands of agreement.