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At 8 am on July 20, as the Cockroach Janta Party assembled at Jantar Mantar, its workers pointed to a truck loaded with stones, parked opposite the Parliament Street police station on the Sansad Marg close to the protest site.
Founder Abhijeet Dipke put out a video asking how it had crossed a police cordon. The stones, the CJP alleged, could be used to frame protesters or trigger violence. The police did not respond.
Newslaundry has traced the vehicle with its registration number. It was not a stray truck: the police had seized it four days earlier, after a pre-dawn crash on July 16 that injured seven people and led to an FIR. It was in the custody of Parliament Street station’s malkhana or warehouse.
Over the next few days, the dumper seems to have moved at least four times – it was first spotted at the protest site, it was taken to Bhalswa to be emptied, it was seen at the pavement outside the Indian Youth Congress office on Raisina Road, and then out of sight. Officers at the same station offer incompatible explanations.
The crash
The FIR records the time of the crash as 4.15 am on July 16. Truck HR63 E 6865, driven rashly and negligently, hit a Maruti Eeco, HR43 D 9778, at the Firoz Shah Road–Kasturba Gandhi Marg crossing in Lutyens’ Delhi. Seven people in the van were injured. Both vehicles were taken to the Parliament Street police station.
The truck was last registered to Keshav Kumar Sahni, who claimed it had been at the station since the crash. “This is a dumper truck that was carrying bricks and stones for construction work,” he said. “However, we sold this dumper about two months ago. I have the agreement.”
Charan Singh, a relative of the van’s current owner, deposited the damaged vehicle at the station. “When the accident happened, seven people were sitting in the vehicle. Everyone was injured,” he said. “It was a truck loaded with bricks and stones that hit our vehicle.”
Three versions from one station
An officer at Parliament Street, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “This truck was parked right outside Parliament Street, directly opposite where the van is standing now. But as soon as the video of the truck went viral on the morning of July 20, we took the truck to the Bhalswa area, emptied it, and brought it back and parked it here again.”
Mohit Bhati, the investigating officer, said the truck was initially shifted because protests were on and the station was short of space. Asked how it reached the Youth Congress office, he said: “We had seized the vehicle, and since then it has been in the possession of the malkhana department. I cannot tell you anything beyond this.”
The FIR records the time of the crash as 4.15 am on July 16. Truck HR63 E 6865, driven rashly and negligently, hit a Maruti Eeco, HR43 D 9778, at the Firoz Shah Road–Kasturba Gandhi Marg crossing in Lutyens’ Delhi. Seven people in the van were injured. Both vehicles were taken to the Parliament Street police station.
Sansad Marg SHO Neeraj Kumar contradicted both. The truck was emptied on July 19, he said – a day before the protest – and the videos in circulation are old footage. Asked how a seized vehicle ended up outside a party office, he said it made no difference where the police chose to park it.
Both timelines cannot hold. Either the truck was emptied on July 19, in which case it should not have been standing full of stones at Jantar Mantar the next morning, or it was emptied on July 20 because a video had gone viral.
Four days on Raisina Road?
On July 25, Indian Youth Congress workers released a video showing the same truck outside their office at 5, Raisina Road. It was towed at about noon that day, after repeated complaints and an argument with the police.
“That truck was standing outside our office for the last four days,” said IYC Delhi president Akshay Lakra. “We complained about it several times, and only then, after three days, was it removed.” Lakra claimed the police had parked it there and the police had removed it, and asked how a truck entered a zone barred to trucks and stood unclaimed for three days.
YouTuber Ratan Ranjan had flagged it four days earlier, posting from outside the Youth Congress office on the evening of July 21 that this was the Jantar Mantar dumper and the Delhi Police should investigate what it was doing there.
CJP had also alleged on July 20 that a damaged van left near the protest site would later be used to accuse protesters of vandalism. Staff at Parliament Street told us the van had been smashed by demonstrators, along with other police vehicles.
Their own FIR says otherwise – it is the Eeco from the July 16 crash. Charan Singh says it has also been moved. “Where I parked my vehicle, there were other broken-down vehicles standing too,” he said. “Where this vehicle is standing now, we did not park it there.”
Meanwhile, a malkhana policeman, speaking anonymously, said the truck is at the traffic pit on Kali Bari Marg.
It was not there when Newslaundry visited the spot.
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