A year after Najeeb went missing, CBI still clueless

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had taken up the mysterious case of the JNU student, Najeeb Ahmed, after the Delhi police failed to crack it. It is, however, yet to achieve a breakthrough in this connection.

Najeeb had gone missing from the campus following a scuffle with some other students in October last year. The high court had first gone after the Delhi police to solve the mysterious disappearance and since it was not satisfied with the progress made by the city police in the case, it transferred the same to the Central probe agency on May 16 this year.

Najeeb (27), a student of M.Sc biotechnology, went missing from the Mahi-Mandvi hostel of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on October 15, 2016. His family members are still running from pillar to post to trace him.

He had an altercation with several students who were allegedly affiliated to the BJP student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), according to his friends and family. After over a month had passed since Najeeb went missing, his mother, Fatima Nafees, moved the Delhi high court seeking directions to the police to trace her son. The high court had immediately directed the Delhi police to “explore all angles” and “cut across political barriers” to trace the young man, saying no one could just vanish from the heart of the national capital without a trace.

However, as no clues turned up even after two months after his disappearance, the court asked the police to scan the entire JNU campus, including hostels, classrooms, and rooftops with the help of sniffer dogs. However, the police failed to sniff out any leads.

This prompted the high court to suggest that the nine students, who were suspected to be behind Najeeb’s disappearance, take a lie detector test. Though the police sent notices to the nine students, asking them to appear for a polygraph (lie detector) test, they ignored the same and subsequently moved the trial court, challenging the step taken by the investigating agency.

Concurrently, Najeeb’s family alleged in the court that they were being harassed by the Delhi police, which was conducting predawn searches at their house in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh. Dissatisfied with the lack of progress in the investigation, the family later demanded that the probe be handed over to some other agency.

In March this year, even the high court admitted that it was “foxed” by the lack of information on the missing student’s whereabouts and demanded an answer from the police on Najeeb’s fate, saying that as far as the probe was concerned, the only thing happening was paperwork.