Leaders of five political parties on Thursday sought President Ram Nath Kovind’s intervention in getting the government to order an inquiry into Delhi police’s investigation of the February riots, including their “fishing expedition” against protesters against the new citizenship matrix.

In a joint letter, leaders of the Congress, CPM, CPI, Rashtriya Janata Dal and the DMK urged the President to call on the Centre to institute a probe under the Commission of Inquiry Act, 1952, headed by a sitting or retired judge.

Like many others before them, the signatories have alleged bias in the Delhi police’s probe, which has ignored provocative speeches by BJP politicians while accusing the riot victims of incitement and violence and booking activists and students who had protested against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

“The investigation cannot be allowed to become a fishing and roving expedition aimed at causing a chilling effect on dissent and protest in the country,” the letter, submitted to the President in person, said.

“There are, however, serious questions about the role played by the Delhi police itself during the violence and also the manner in which the police is harassing and attempting to falsely implicate activists and young people who took part in the anti-CAA/NRC/NPR movements as the perpetrators of violence,” Thursday’s letter said.

It cited accounts and videos that suggested the police were complicit in the violence, directing the stone-throwing mobs or looking the other way when rioters were on the rampage.

The letter highlighted the police’s recent effort to “falsely implicate” political leaders including CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury –a signatory to the joint letter – in a supplementary chargesheet.It also flagged the “notable silence in the chargesheets on the role of leaders associated with the BJP who gave inflammatory speeches”, and said this raised concern about the probe’s impartiality.

“In fact even when people have courageously filed complaints against BJP leaders – Kapil Mishra, Anurag Thakur, Parvesh Verma, Satya Pal Singh, Jagdish Pradhan, Nand Kishore Gujjar and Mohan Singh Bisht – accusing them of participating in or orchestrating the violence, there has been no action by the Delhi police,” the letter said.

It contrasted this with the way the police had tried to criminalise the protests against the new citizenship regime and portray the countrywide agitation against it as a conspiracy._“The FIR (59/2020) regarding this ‘conspiracy’ being investigated by the (police’s) Special Cell, in which the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) has been invoked, is being used to carry out a fishing and roving inquiry against activists and young persons who were involved with the protests,” the letter said.

Besides Yechury, the signatories were Ahmed Patel (Congress), D. Raja (CPI), Manoj Jha (RJD) and Kanimozhi (DMK).