As Court allows CBI to close Najeeb case, propagandists start peddling false narrative: Was he assaulted by ABVP the day he went missing? Nope. Here is what the court said
On the 30th of June 2025, Delhi’s Rouse Avenue Court accepted the closure report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the JNU student Najeeb Ahmed’s missing case, who had gone missing in October 2016.
This case was transferred to the CBI. The agency filed a closure report in 2018. His mother, Fatima Nafees, had challenged the closure report.
Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) Jyoti Maheshwari accepted the closure report filed by the CBI.
“The CBI is at liberty to reopen the case if any evidence is found in connection with this case,” ACJM Maheshwari said orally while pronouncing the order.
Earlier, the Investigation Officer (IO) had also informed that the statements of Najeeb’s mother, Fatima, his friend from Jamia, Qasim, and the hostel warden at JNU were recorded.
Najeeb’s mother, Fatima Nafees, had moved a protest petition against the closure report of the CBI. The Delhi High Court has transferred the case from the Delhi police to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the case.
It was alleged that Najeeb had gone missing after an altercation with some students. Initially, an FIR was lodged by the Delhi police. The case was transferred to the CBI on May 16, 2017. Thereafter, an FIR was registered by the CBI in June 2017. The CBI had filed a closure report in 2018.
Left loonies and Islamists peddle lies about Najeeb Ahmad’s disappearance
While the court has accepted CBI’s closure report, the Islamo-leftists are peddling lies and twisting facts to concoct a narrative that somehow the CBI and the whole ‘system’ deliberately shielded those supposedly behind Najeeb Ahmad’s disappearance. Their rhetoric essentially asserts that concrete action was replaced with a deliberate cover-up simply because of Najeeb’s Muslim identity and ideology that opposed Hindutva.
In this vein, TMC MP Saket Gokhale claimed that Najeeb was ‘assaulted’ by ABVP members, and that the CBI ‘protected’ the culprits, insinuating that the BJP and its student wing were behind Najeeb’s disappearance.
“About 10 years ago, JNU student Najeeb Ahmed suddenly disappeared. Just before this, he was assaulted by ABVP goons (student wing of the BJP). Today, the CBI closed the case without solving it. Who did they protect? The answer is clear. It’s a SHAME that this case was quietly buried,” Gokhale said.
Islamist propaganda outlet Maktoob Media and its Founding Editor Aslah Kayyalakkath also furthered the narrative that Najeeb and his mother have been denied justice, and that ABVP students Najeeb allegedly had a scuffle with were behind his disappearance.
Another known Islamist Mohammad Shadab Khan also insinuated that ABVP-linked students may have been behind Najeeb’s disappearance saying that Najeeb has ‘heated argument’ with ABVP students , even as the CBI investigation made no such revelations. Khan also asserted that somehow the CBI and even the judiciary somehow
“In 2016, Muslim student Najeeb Ahmed, who went missing from JNU’s Mahi Mandvi Hostel, remains untraced to this day. Now, a Delhi court has accepted the closure report submitted by the CBI, and no “negligence” has been acknowledged in the investigation. But this case is not just about a missing person; it has become an example of the collective failure of Indian democracy, the functioning of investigative agencies, and the safety of a minority student. For 8 years, the country’s largest investigative agency could not locate a student, even though early investigations had revealed that, just before his disappearance, he had a heated altercation with some ABVP students,” Khan wrote.
“Today, when the court says that the CBI made its “best efforts,” the question is inevitable: Are the state’s efforts determined by a citizen’s religious and ideological identity? Does a student with an “unacceptable ideology” deserve to “disappear” in this country?” he added.
Meanwhile, NDTV projected the court’s acceptance of the CBI’s closure report as a ‘defeat’ of Najeeb Ahmed’s mother.
Over the years and even now, the Islamo-leftist cabal projects Najeeb Ahmed as holier than thou, and a victim of the imaginary ‘Hindutva fascism’ by asserting that he disappeared after a scuffle with ABVP students. However, none of them ever mention that it was Najeeb Ahmed who started the scuffle by slapping a Hindu student, mocking his Kalava (sacred thread) and abusing him.
Claims made by Najeeb Ahmed’s mother in the protest petition against CBI’s closure report
In its order dated 30th June 2025, the court said that despite investigation, no information regarding Najeeb could be unearthed to date, and consequently, the present closure report has been filed.
In her protest petition, Najeeb Ahmed’s mother, Fatima Nafees, contended that the stance of the CBI that Najeeb Ahmed left the premises of JNU voluntarily is demonstrably false. CBI has primarily relied on the statement of the Hostel Warden, Arun Srivastava, as per which he saw Najeeb Ahmed passing by his house at around 11:30 am on 15.10.2016, where he boarded an auto-rickshaw, which took a U-turn, and he went away, never to be seen again. However, the petitioner argued that the statement of Arun Srivastava was false and an afterthought.
Najeeb’s mother also claimed that the CBI failed to appreciate that the events on the preceding night, i.e 14.10.2016, show that Najeeb was assaulted and threatened by some persons and thus, these 9 persons had a clear motive to cause harm to Najeeb, but their role in the disappearance of Najeeb has not been properly investigated by the CBI.
In addition, it was also claimed that the CBI ‘exaggerated’ Najeeb’s mental condition to conclude that he was suffering from recurrent depression and to establish their theory of voluntary disappearance.
The CBI filed a reply to Fatima Nafees’s protest petition stating that all the mentioned grounds are “not applicable in the present case and the protest petition deserves to be dismissed.”
Najeeb Ahmed started the scuffle with students on the night preceding his disappearance, slapped a Hindu student for seeking his vote
The court noted that Najeeb Ahmed, a M.Sc. Biotechnology student at JNU slapped a student named Vikrant Kumar on 14.10.2016, who, along with Ankit Kumar Roy and Sunil Pratap Singh, had approached the room where Najeeb was to request him to cast his vote in their favour. The trio were campaigning for the elections of Mess Secretary and Hostel Committee Member.
Najeeb got angry after the Hindu students requested him to vote for them, he slapped and abused Vikrant Kumar twice and also questioned him about his Kalava (sacred thread tied on Vikrant’s wrist. Moreover, Najeeb also pushed Sunil Pratap Singh, as he tried to intervene, and a scuffle then ensued between Vikrant and Najeeb. At this time, Ankit Roy went to call the security guard from the ground floor of the hostel.
As the matter escalated with a crowd of students gathering at the spot, Najeeb first bolted his room from inside but later moved to the washroom. While hostel authorities, including wardens and supervisors, arrived at the spot, Vikrant Kumar and his supporters raised slogans against Najeeb Ahmed.
Meanwhile, Najeeb was brought to the office of the Warden, with the help of a security guard and an emergency meeting was held in the Warden’s office, on the intervening night of 14.10.2016 and 15.10.2016.
The court noted that Najeeb orally admitted that he had Vikrant without any provocation and also pleaded “sorry”. The hostel authorities asked Vikrant and Najeeb to submit in writing about the incident, and Vikrant gave a complaint, mentioning that Najeeb had slapped him, while Najeeb wrote a one-line submission, “I don’t remember”, and handed over the same to the Senior Warden. Upon being asked whether he had been beaten up by anyone, Najeeb replied that he did not remember anything. Najeeb was initially expelled from the hostel; however, an order in this respect was later withdrawn by the wardens.
Contrary to the insinuations furthered by Islamo-leftists that somehow the ABVP students Najeeb had a scuffle with may have been involved in what caused Najeeb’s disappearance, Najeeb was active on WhatsApp and interacted with his friends till 09:59 am on 15.10.2016 and was in touch with his classmates, but he did not express any sort of threat or apprehension to his life from anyone.
However, when Najeeb’s mother, along with her other son, Mujeeb Ahmed, reached the hostel from Badaun, Najeeb was not there and his mobile phone and laptop were lying in the hostel room itself.
The court detailed the course of investigation and also highlighted efforts undertaken by the CBI during their investigation. The court noted that the CBI examined around 560 witnessess, including inter alia, the family members of Najeeb, his classmates, Hostel administration, the doctors treating Najeeb, security guards and students at JNU, members of the Proctorial Enquiry Committee, and the officials of Delhi Police involved in search of the JNU premises and other neighbouring areas.
The court order mentions an elaborate list of the efforts made by the CBI to trace Najeeb Ahmed and noted that from scrutinising CDRs of suspects, analysing visitor registeres of JNU hostels and transit houses, examining 116 auto dirving plying in and around JNU campus and 61 drivers operating around Jamia Milia University, seeking information from taxi and cab drivers, railways, checking with airlines to trace if Najeeb took any flight, scrutinising Najeeb’s bank accounts for recent transactions, retrieving phone data from CFSL, issuing Yellow Notice through Interpol, seeking information about Najeeb though External Affairs Ministry, announcing Rs 10,00,000 rewards for proving information about the missing man, taking help of DGPs of all state police for seeking details of unidentified dead bodies if they had any resemblance with Najeeb, seeking details from hospitals across Delhi, Agra and Bareilly for mental illness patients, contacting prison authorities to check if he was lodged in any jail, contacting Delhi Waqf Board regarding burial of dead bodies, monitoring ZIPNET portal, visiting Dargahs of Delhi and other states to find any clue of Najeeb, to whatnot, the CBI make every possible effort.
However, despite all the painstaking and persistent efforts, Najeeb Ahmed’s whereabouts could not be traced. Thus, a closure report was filed by the probe agency in 2018, with an option to reopen the investigation if any credible information emerges.
What did the Delhi court say while accepting the CBI’s closure report in Najeeb Ahmed’s case?
In its analysis of the grounds raised in the protest petition moved by Najeeb’s mother, the court said that the petitioner’s contention that the contradictory statements of LW-4 Arun Srivastava and LW-18 Mohd Qasim show that the voluntary disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed is an afterthought and is liable to be rejected is not valid.
The court said that the case of the protest petitioner is that this claim of seeing Najeeb board an autorickshaw at around 11:30 am on 15.10.2016, was made for the first time after a lapse of around 1.5 months, since the disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed.
“However, a perusal of the record shows that the statement of Arun Srivastava was recorded on 17.10.2016, by Delhi Police, wherein he had categorically stated about seeing Najeeb Ahmed boarding the autorickshaw at around 11:30 am-12 noon on 15.10.2016,” the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Jyoti Maheshwari of the Rouse Avenue Court noted.
Further dismantling the protest petitioner’s argument disputing Arun Srivastava’s testimony and its consistency, the court said, “This statement is a part of the judicial record in the charge-sheet dated 11.03.2017, filed by Delhi Police in the Court of the-then Ld. CMM, Patiala House Court, New Delhi. The witness Arun Srivastava (LW-4) has consistently mentioned the same, whenever he has been examined, and thus, there arises no occasion to disbelieve the statement of the witness, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary.”
The court further stated that the claim made by Mohammad Qasim (Najeeb’s friend) that Najeeb b was in his room at around 11:30 AM, contrary to Srivastava’s testimony, is “not worth delving into and appears to be an argument made only for the sake of it.”
Addressing the protest petitioner’s argument that the CBI did not properly investigate the case, the court pointed out that the petitioner’s counsel relied on the scuffle that took place on the preceding night, wherein Najeeb Najeeb had admittedly slapped another hostel resident, Vikrant.
The protest petitioner’s counsel cited statements of several students who claimed that Najeeb was assaulted and also received threats from those protesting against him after the scuffle. Based on these testimonies, the petitioner argued that Vikrant Kumar and his supporters were among the mob that assaulted Najeeb and also threatened to kill him; however, the CBI did not properly investigate the alleged incriminating role of these individuals.
However, the court pointed out that the CBI made elaborate mention of the physical violence of the preceding night and how the matter escalated. The investigating officer (IO) had submitted that a probe was conducted to find the exact location of these 9 suspects at and around the time, when Najeeb had gone missing and all possible efforts were made to find out, about any foul play or involvement of these 9 suspects or any other person in the disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed, however, “no fruitful result could be achieved.”
“It is further submitted that the movement of 9 suspects was checked, their CDRs were scrutinised, digital foot-printing of their CDRs was conducted and the mobile phones seized from them, were forensically examined by the CFSL experts. However, they could not be linked with the disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed,” the court order reads.
While the protest petitioner insinuated that the students Najeeb had a scuffle with, may have been behind his disappearance, the court noted that the digital foot-printing report of the CDRs and the CFSL reports confirm that suspects Vikrant Kumar, Vijendra Thakur, Aishwarya Pratap Singh, and Abhijeet were in the JNU stadium for a cricket match between residents of Mahi-Mandvi Hostel and Lohit Hostel and remained there, from the morning of 15.10.2016 till lunch time, when the match got over.
Meanwhile, another suspect, Pushpesh Jha, went to the library along with Deepak on 15.10.2016 at around 10:30 am and was not found in the vicinity from where Najeeb had gone missing. Similarly, another suspect, Ankit Kumar Roy, had gone to attend the School of Language on 15.10.2016, in the morning and returned to the hostel at 1:30 pm, the court order reads.
It also refuted the protest petitioner’s contention that the CBI did not corroborate the claims made by the suspects about their whereabouts on 15.10.2016; however, CDR locations of the suspects showed otherwise. “There is no basis to assume that this electronic evidence is not reliable,” ACJM Maheshwari stated.
The court, however, noted that a “perturbing incident had taken place on the previous night, before Najeeb Ahmed had gone missing, but that is ipso facto not sufficient to arrive at the conclusion that the suspects had any role to play in causing the disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed.”
The court stated that scuffles and exchanges during hostel elections on campus, like JNU, however, the “same is not a sufficient basis to conclude that these young students would go to an extent to cause disappearance of another student, especially when there is no evidence on record to suggest the same.”
Moreover, the CBI had even filed an application to conduct the polygraph test of the nine suspects; however, it was dismissed by the then ACMM, Patiala House in 2017, since the suspects did not consent to the same. It must be noted that a polygraph test cannot be conducted without the consent of the respondent.
Thus, the court stated, “Merely because the investigating agency had not arrested the suspects and conducted their custodial interrogation, the same is not a ground for alleging improper investigation, more so, when sufficient evidence has been collected on record, which shows the absence of any incriminating role of the suspects.”
Regarding the claim made by the protest petitioner that the CBI made exaggerated claims about Najeeb’s mental health, the court noted that Najeeb’s psychiatrist Dr. Premlata Chawla and even his mother, Nafis Fatima, also confirmed that Najeeb indeed suffered from recurrent depression, was undergoing treatment for the same and also had sleeping issues.
Najeeb’s friend Qasim also testified that Najeeb did not sleep the whole night after the scuffle and stared at the ceiling despite taking medicines. The court also highlighted that when Najeeb complained of neck pain and was taken to Safdarjung Hospital, he was not medically examined there as he suffered no serious injuries. While returning, Najeeb was constantly insisting on being taken to Gurgaon to meet his aunt there; however, it turned out that Najeeb had no aunt or any relative residing in Gurgaon.
While the protest petitioner contended that since Najeeb was reluctant to return to the hostel, the suspects may have been involved in causing his disappearance, however, the court noted that Najeeb’s reluctance to return to the hostel also “opens the door for the possibility that Najeeb would have voluntarily left the hostel.”
The court also noted that the protest petitioner’s contention that Najeeb’s mental health was not such that he would voluntarily leave the hostel stands speculative and conjectural as well as devoid of any factual merit.
“There is no evidence of any scuffle or exchange of Najeeb with any person, on the day/ morning of his disappearance, once he returned to the hostel, and thus, it cannot be said that Najeeb’s disappearance was caused by any suspect or any other person at JNU,” ACJM Maheshwari observed.
The court further highlighted that even the Delhi High Court had in 2018 observed that the investigation was meticulously carried out by the CBI.
The court sympathised with Najeeb Ahmed’s mother, but refused to mindlessly villainise the CBI
While the court took cognisance of the plight of Najeeb’s mother, who has been making efforts to trace her son since 2016, the court stated that the CBI “cannot be faulted for the investigation carried out. The quest for truth is the foundation of every criminal investigation, yet there are cases where the investigation conducted cannot achieve its logical conclusion, despite the best efforts of the investigating machinery.”
The court, thus, accepted the closure report filed by the CBI and also hoped that Najeeb Ahmed would be traced soon, adding that while the case is ending with a closure report, Najeeb’s mother is yet to get a closure.
“Therefore, upon a comprehensive assessment of the facts and circumstances, this Court is of the considered opinion that CBI has investigated all plausible avenues available in the present case and the present closure report stands accepted. As a parting note, the Court also earnestly hopes that Najeeb Ahmed shall be traced soon. This Court expresses its regret that while the proceedings in the present case end with this closure report, a closure for Najeeb’s mother and other loved ones, still eludes us,” the court stated.
Conclusion
The Islamists and their leftist allies are pushing a false and sinister narrative that Najeeb Ahmed’s case was mishandled by the CBI due to his Muslim identity or to shield ABVP-linked students. However, contrary to their lies, the court noted that the CBI conducted a thorough investigation to trace Najeeb and, despite their best efforts over the years, Najeeb Ahmed could not be found.
After taking over the case, the CBI examined hundreds of documents and witnesses, analysed multiple investigative avenues, yet no evidence linking the students Najeeb clashed with on the preceding night, to his disappearance could be found.
Moreover, claiming that the CBI did a deliberate cover-up to shield those supposedly behind Najeeb’s disappearance is a deliberate disregard of the court’s ruling that the CBI exhausted all options and found no foul play, and despite this, the court has granted liberty to reopen the case if new evidence is found.
However, those who have a penchant for making heroes out of riot-accused persons and anti-elements, be it Umar Khalid or Sharjeel Imam, have no qualms in using a person’s disappearance to further their false narrative of Muslim victimhood.
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