A Madhya Pradesh sessions court has acquitted 11 men accused in the 2022 Khargone Ram Navami violence after the prosecution’s case collapsed with eight of its 11 eyewitnesses failing to identify any of the accused and laboratory findings failing to establish the alleged use of petrol bombs or any explosive substance.The case arose from the communal violence that erupted in Khargone on April 10, 2022 during Ram Navami processions.According to the prosecution, mobs armed with stones, swords and petrol bombs attacked houses in the Bhatwadi locality between 6 pm and 9 pm, setting homes and motorcycles on fire, damaging property and allegedly trespassing into residences. One man, identified as Idris Khan, was killed in the violence.Police charged 11 men — Ibadat, Sadiq, Abdullah, Saheb alias Shahib, Sheryar, Faizal, Azam, Shabbir, Imran, Mustaq and Rajik — with rioting, arson, house trespass and offences under the Explosive Substances Act in connection with the violence.A day after the violence, the district administration had carried out a demolition drive, razing 16 houses and 29 shops in five localities of the town. The then Madhya Pradesh Home Minister, Narottam Mishra, had said “Jis ghar se patthar aaye hain, us ghar ko hi pattharon ka dher banayenge (Will turn the houses from where the stones were hurled to a heap of rubble).”In a detailed judgment Monday, Fourth Additional Sessions Judge Mukesh Nath held that the prosecution’s case collapsed on the question of identification. The court found that eight of the 11 eyewitnesses examined by the prosecution completely failed to implicate the accused, no test identification parade was ever conducted, there was no explanation on how police selected the accused from a mob of about 50 people, and forensic evidence failed to establish the alleged use of petrol bombs.The court recorded that eight prosecution witnesses, including complainants and victims, “did not support the prosecution story.”Story continues below this ad“None of these eight witnesses identified any of the accused; none stated that any accused had committed any act constituting the incident; no substantive evidence emerged in their testimonies against any accused,” it said.Even after they were declared hostile, “the prosecution derived no benefit, and no substantive fact implicating the accused persons came on record.” The court concluded that “the involvement of the accused persons in the offence is neither disclosed nor proved in any manner”.The prosecution’s case rested substantially on a local resident, Vaishnavi Jain, whom the court described as the only witness to attribute the incident to all 11 accused. But the judgment found her evidence riddled with contradictions.The court noted that Vaishnavi claimed she recognised all the accused by their faces, while her own father Dinesh Jain and brother Akash Jain both stated that the rioters had “their faces covered with cloth”.Story continues below this adAkash told the court he saw only four or five people and “does not know the persons who committed the incident… because he could not see their faces, as their faces were covered with cloth.” The court held that “no substantive fact against the accused persons emerges from the testimony of this witness, nor does his testimony establish the identity of the accused persons.”The judgment was equally critical of Dinesh Jain’s testimony. Although he identified all 11 accused in court, the judge said that “merely because a witness identifies the accused persons does not establish their involvement in the offence unless the witness specifically states that the person identified was among those who committed the crime”.The court found that Dinesh Jain admitted he had viewed the crowd from 500-600 metres away, had not seen the accused from the front, had no prior personal acquaintance with them, accepted that the rioters had covered their faces, and ultimately admitted that “he could not say who burnt the door of his house, who threw the stones, or who committed the looting”.The judge found it “not natural, satisfactory, or reliable” that someone could identify people merely by seeing them “from behind at a distance of 500-600 metres”, particularly when the witness accepted that the rioters had covered their faces.Story continues below this adThe court identified several investigative lapses that further weakened the prosecution. It noted that Vaishnavi’s name did not appear as an eyewitness in any of the written complaints or the FIR, despite both being lodged two days after the violence. It also found “no explanation for the delay of two days in lodging the First Information Report.”The court observed that Vaishnavi’s police statement under Section 161 CrPC was recorded 51 days after the incident, with “no explanation” for the delay in recording the statement of what the prosecution claimed was its most important eyewitness.The judgment questioned how police had implicated all 11 accused in the first place. It noted that the FIR named only six accused, while five others were added later without any explanation.The prosecution also failed to establish its allegation that petrol bombs had been used. Referring to the State Forensic Science Laboratory report, the court recorded that “no residues of inflammable petroleum hydrocarbons (petrol/diesel/kerosene) were detected” in the seized bottle fragments and burnt material.