Hello,
This is my first newsletter for The Reporters’ Collective, so a quick introduction. I am Sumedha, a Delhi-based reporter who covers the Election Commission full-time and, on the side, other beats like crime, education.
In 2020, my first reporting assignment took me to northeast Delhi as the violence tore through its streets. One video that spread like a wildfire showed a group of cops thrashing Faizan and four other Muslims with lathis, forcing them to sing national anthem as they lay on the ground. After the assault, the police kept Faizan in custody for a day. When he was released, he was in a critical condition, and died the following day.
Delhi Police spent over four years investigating without naming a single cop. In July 2024, the Delhi High Court said plainly what many already knew – that the probe was “conveniently sparing of those who are suspected to be involved in brutally assaulting” them. The case was handed to the CBI with the hope of a fairer investigation.
When the CBI filed a chargesheet this February, I was curious: how had they zeroed in on the two cops? I chased the document for three months before someone in the legal circles decided to share it.
What I found was damning, not just for Delhi Police, which had lied about evidence, but for the CBI itself, which had the right tools to find more than the two killers already suspected by the Delhi Police SIT. We counted at least nine cops in one video cited in the chargesheet. But the CBI stopped at just two. Faizan’s other killers in all likelihood continue to serve in the police today.
To see what the CBI chargesheet reveals, read the full story here: Faizan was Beaten to Death by Delhi Policemen. CBI says it Could Not Find all his Killers.
As many freelancers will tell you, finding editors who put in work and fight as hard for a story as the reporter does rare these days. Finding a newsroom that does it without corporate backing is rarer still.
Chasing documents and sources for months, days of reporting and back and forth, and hours of fact-checking – this is what TRC does with rigour to hold those in power to account. That only happens because readers like you fund it. Please support The Reporters’ Collective, so stories like Faizan’s keeps getting told.
Regards,
Sumedha Mittal