In Aman Kashyap v. The State of NCT of Delhi, CRL.A. 133/2025, decided with four connected appeals on 27 October 2026, the Delhi High Court dismissed the challenges of five men convicted for their part in a mob assault during the North-East Delhi violence of February 2020, in which a 22-year-old died of blunt-force head injuries. Justice Madhu Jain's judgment, reserved on 9 October and pronounced on 27 October, addresses three recurring battlegrounds of riot-case appeals: the worth of police witnesses, identification without a test identification parade, and the reach of Section 149 IPC.
The incident and the trial
On 25 February 2020, during the violence in North-East Delhi, a 22-year-old man named Monish was set upon by a mob near Brijpuri and Chand Bagh. He died at GTB Hospital; the post-mortem attributed death to shock caused by blunt-force injuries to the brain. The FIR — No. 87/2020 of PS Dayalpur — invoked Sections 147, 148, 149, 427, 436 and 302 IPC along with the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act. After trial in SC No. 199/2021, the Additional Sessions Judge convicted five men — Aman Kashyap, Devinder Kumar, Pradeep Rai, Ashish @ Goli and Arun Kumar — under Sections 148 and 304 Part I read with 149 IPC, sentencing each to seven years\' rigorous imprisonment on the principal count.
The evidentiary architecture under attack
The appeals targeted the familiar pressure points of a riot prosecution. The eyewitness foundation rested mainly on three police witnesses — PW-10, PW-12 and PW-13 — who deposed that the appellants led the armed mob. A public witness, PW-1, partly retracted his earlier account; PW-5 identified no accused. No test identification parade was held, and the police witnesses\' statements were recorded on 1 April 2020, more than a month after the incident. The defence pressed each of these as fatal.
The High Court dealt with them in sequence. PW-1\'s partial retraction did not erase his continuing identification of the appellants as members of the mob, so his evidence retained limited value. The police witnesses could not be discarded for their uniform: their accounts corresponded, and duty records placed them at the scene. On identification, the Court held that the absence of a TIP does not render dock identification inadmissible — it calls for caution, and here PW-10\'s prior acquaintance with the appellants supplied the assurance a parade might otherwise have given. The delay in recording statements was only partly explained by the riot conditions, but it neither discredited the occurrence nor suggested false implication; discrepancies about the exact place of assault, the PCR call, CCTV footage and call records were not decisive.
Section 149: the common object, not the fatal hand
The judgment restates the settled architecture of constructive liability. Membership of the unlawful assembly and its common object could be inferred from the weapons carried, the exhortations attributed to the appellants, and their conduct during the assault. Once that inference stood, liability under Section 149 did not depend on proving which member inflicted the fatal injury. And the manner of the assault — repeated head blows after the victim had fallen — justified the finding under Section 304 Part I of an intention to cause bodily injury likely to cause death.
What the dismissal signals for riot-case appeals
Appeals in the 2020 violence cases have produced outcomes in both directions, turning almost entirely on the quality of identification evidence. Where identification has rested on untested footage or witnesses without prior acquaintance, acquittals have followed; where consistent eyewitness accounts survive cross-examination and are anchored by duty records or prior familiarity, convictions stand. This judgment sits firmly in the second category. For appellate practitioners, the lesson is that attacking police testimony in the abstract achieves little — the appeal must demonstrate concrete contradictions between the witnesses, the contemporaneous record and the medical evidence, and this record offered too few.
The appeals were dismissed in their entirety, and the convictions and sentences stand as imposed by the trial court.
Frequently Asked Questions
What were the appellants convicted of?
The five appellants were convicted by the Additional Sessions Judge-03, North-East District, Karkardooma Courts, in SC No. 199/2021 arising from FIR No. 87/2020, PS Dayalpur, under Sections 148 and 304 Part I read with 149 IPC. Each was sentenced to one year's simple imprisonment under Section 148 and seven years' rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs 30,000 under Section 304 Part I, the sentences running concurrently.
Can a conviction rest mainly on police witnesses?
Yes. The High Court reiterated that the official status of a witness is not by itself a ground to discard the testimony. Here the accounts of the three police witnesses corresponded with one another and duty records supported their presence at the spot. Their evidence was tested like any other — for consistency, probability and corroboration — and survived.
Does the absence of a test identification parade defeat identification in court?
No. The Court held that the absence of a TIP does not render identification evidence inadmissible, though it must be assessed with caution. One of the police witnesses had prior acquaintance with the appellants, which strengthened the dock identification. The delay in recording statements was only partly explained by the riot conditions, but the Court found it did not discredit the occurrence or suggest false implication.
Why Section 304 Part I and not Section 302?
The conviction as framed by the trial court was under Section 304 Part I read with Section 149. The High Court found that the manner of assault — including repeated blows to the head after the victim fell — supported an intention to cause bodily injury likely to cause death, and that under Section 149 each member of the unlawful assembly was liable for acts done in prosecution of the common object, without proof of who struck the fatal blow.