Delhi HC raps cops over failure to trace Najeeb Ahmed

New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Friday slammed the police for remaining clueless about missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed, who remains untraced for 55 days, asking how can a man just “vanish suddenly.”

Maintaining that it was concerned with the recovery of the boy whose mother has been running from pillar to post to be united with her son, the court said a situation, in which a missing person has not been traced for over 50 days, would create a sense of insecurity among the people.

“It is over 50 days. Still you (police) do not know about his whereabouts. How can somebody vanish suddenly and police has no clue about it? Even if we think of the worst, something has to be found out. We are pained that the missing person has not been traced till date,” a bench of Justices G.S. Sistani and Vinod Goel said.

Najeeb went missing from JNU’s Mahi-Mandvi hostel on October 15 allegedly after an on-campus scuffle between him and some members of the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). The ABVP has denied involvement in his disappearance. The bench said, “We are not concerned with the scuffle. We only want that the boy is recovered and he returns to his house. We are concerned that the mother should get her child.”

The court’s oral observation came after the police and the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) informed it that Najeeb has remained untraceable till date and they were making all efforts to locate him.

The varsity and the police were responding to the habeus corpus plea filed by Najeeb’s 45-year old mother Fatima Nafees.