I Was Assaulted By Cops, My Clients Threatened: Delhi Riots Lawyer Mehmood Pracha

A day after the Delhi Police’s special cell carried out a near 15-hour-long raid at his office, lawyer Mehmood Pracha, who is appearing as counsel for defence in several cases linked to the February 2020 Northeast Delhi riots, has leveled serious allegations against the police. Speaking to Outlook, Pracha said the police team assaulted him and some of his colleagues when the raids “failed to give them what they had hoped to discover”.

A team of special cell sleuths had arrived at Pracha’s law firm, Legal Axis, in Delhi’s Nizamuddin East locality at around 12.30pm on December 24 and left the premises at 3am. Pracha told Outlook that the raiding party “hacked into our computers to access various records without telling us what they were downloading”. He said that the team “kept changing its demands and each time we would furnish details sought by them, the Investigating Officer who identified himself as Rajeev would go out to speak to someone on the phone and then return saying he wasn’t satisfied and wanted to look at more documents”.

Insisting that he cooperated with the police because “he wanted everyone to see how the Delhi police was trying to intimidate a lawyer and derail a case for justice” but said he “sensed something was terribly wrong when the IO was signing a document related to the raid.” Pracha alleged that “the IO had identified himself to us as Rajeev but he used some other name while signing the papers… this is when I realized that this was not a regular raid and I immediately asked my colleagues to call the local police and file a complaint against the raiding party”.

The lawyer alleged that “there were at least two people who had come with the special cell team who we later found out were not from the Delhi police but were possibly civilians… when we tried to question them, they ran away.” Pracha says that he let the raid continue after he spoke to a senior police officer who assured him that “though the man who identified himself as the IO wasn’t the investigating officer, he was part of the special cell.”

The search warrant against Pracha, issued by a local Delhi court, on December 22, against FIR 212/2020 read: “It has been made to appear to me that incriminating documents comprising false complaint and meta-data of outbox of email account which was used to send incriminating documents are essential to the investigation of FIR NO. 212/20 of Police station special cell, New Delhi… This is to authorize and require investigating officer of this case to search for the said incriminating documents and meta-data of outbox of email ID, wherever they may be found whether in computer or in the office/premises of Sh Mehmood Pracha.”  

The police had initially told Pracha that they only wanted “three documents” but soon after the raid began, the IO insisted on seizing his laptop and other office computers. “I told the team that they do not have the legal permission to seize my laptop. I am also bound by attorney-client privilege under the Evidence Act and cannot divulge or allow police to access records that have the potential to break the confidence of my clients. I told the team that they are free to look at our laptops and computers but they can’t seize them,” Pracha said.

The Delhi court, which had ordered a probe against Pracha on allegations that he falsified an affidavit and tutored some witnesses and victims in the Northeast Delhi riots cases, had also told the police that the raid at his office must be videographed. “Since the police are duty bound to fully comply with the orders in the search warrant, they had to videograph the raid. I only hope that they police do not doctor the video records because the full videography of the raid will show that everything I am saying is the truth… this raid was carried out in complete violation of the law and its intention was not to serve justice but to bury it.”

Pracha also alleged that the police have been calling up some of his clients in the riots cases and threatening them to withdraw the cases. “They are telling my clients that we will put your lawyer in jail or encounter him if needed… where will you go then,” Pracha told Outlook. The lawyer said that he isn’t “disturbed by the police’s conduct simply because this has happened to me or in a sensitive case but because of the trend of unabashed abuse of power that the raid signifies”. He added that “if the police are allowed to intimidate lawyers in this manner, no lawyer in this country will be safe and it won’t be limited to just cases that are politically or socially sensitive… tomorrow if a person complains against a police officer or even files a civil dispute against some local strongman, the police will simply barge into the office of his or her lawyer and seize documents or evidence that are crucial to winning the case; the Evidence Act, the attorney-client privilege, fair investigation will all be a thing of the past if such raids are allowed to continue.”

The Northeast Delhi riots cases are only one set of politically sensitive matters that Pracha, who identifies himself as an Ambedkarite and a civil rights lawyer, has taken up in his long legal career. He had also appeared in the past for Bhim Army’s Chandrashekhar Azad ‘Ravan’ and in several other matters related to communal and caste-based targeting of different individuals and communities. He told Outlook that he is “not going to back down from his fight for justice for the marginalized and will continue to take up causes that are necessary to uphold and strengthen the spirit of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Constitution.”