The Delhi High Court adjourned the hearing for March 12 in Delhi violence case and asked the Centre and Delhi Police and other respondents to file their replies by then.
The court was hearing petitions seeking registration of FIRs against several BJP leaders for their alleged hate speech.
The court also directed all the government hospitals to videograph autopsies of people killed in Delhi violence and hospitals not to dispose of any unidentified body till March 11. It also directed the authorities to preserve DNA samples of all dead bodies.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ordered the hearing and expressed disapproval for the High Court’s long adjournment of the matter. The plea has been filed by some riots victims as well as by activist Harsh Mander.
“We request the High Court to deal with these cases expeditiously. We think that adjournment of such long period (by the High Court) is unjustified,” Chief Justice SA Bobde said.
“We are of the view that in the interest of justice, the cases be listed before the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court on Friday,” Justice Bobde.
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The petitioners had approached the top court after the Delhi high court deferred the hearing in the case to April 13. The high court had last week accepted the Centre’s logic that the time was not conducive to register hate speech cases and given the government four weeks to file a counter-affidavit in response to the plea.
The hate speeches by BJP leaders Kapil Mishra, Parvesh Verma, Anurag Thakur and Abhay Verma were seen as having a key role in the four-day mayhem.