Clashes lasted 36 hours, thank police for bringing peace: Amit Shah on Delhi riots in LS

Union home minister Amit Shah responded to the discussion on Delhi violence in the Lok Sabha today.

The Delhi Police have done a commendable job during last month’s violence, confining the violence to 4 per cent of the city’s area, 13 per cent of its population and ending it within 36 hours, Union home minister Amit Shah said today. He also said that he was personally monitoring the situation, sitting along with the police.

The first information about the violence came around 2 pm on February 24, the last at 11 pm on February 25, Shah said.

“I would like to place on record that after 25th February no incident of rioting took place. There have been attempts to politicise these riots,” he added, while responding to the discussion on the violence, which the opposition has been demanding since last week.

“MPs raised doubts about what the police were doing. It is the opposition’s right to question. But when the police were trying to control the riots, struggling with violence, we should understand,” he said, to hoots of derision from the opposition.

Mr Shah said the government had asked people for video footage of the violence. “We have received thousands of videos. We are using Face identification to find accused. It is a software so it does not differentiate on the basis of religion,” he said.

The software, he said, has helped identify 1,100 people. “We have also identified 300 people who came from UP,” he added.

The violence — which started in northeast Delhi as a clash between those protesting between the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act and those supporting it in Jaffrabad — had cost more than 50 lives. More than 200 people were injured.

The opposition Congress, which for days have been demanding a discussion on the issue in parliament, alleged that the violence continued for days because of the inaction by the Delhi Police. The police, it said, was taking orders from the Union home ministry, to which it reports.