2022 Khargone Communal Violence: MP Court Acquits All 11 Accused In Ram Navami Riots Case

A Sessions Court in Khargone, Madhya Pradesh, has acquitted eleven Muslim men who were accused of rioting, arson and vandalism during the 2022 Ram Navami violence in the town's Bhatwadi neighbourhood, holding that the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.

The judgment, delivered on July 27, 2026 by Fourth Additional Sessions Judge Mukesh Nath in Sessions Trial No. 75/2022, brings to a close one of the most closely watched criminal cases to emerge from the communal clashes that convulsed the town over four years ago now.

The eleven accused faced charges under Sections 147, 148, 149, 336, 427, 435, 436, 450 and 120B of the Indian Penal Code, along with Sections 3 and 4 of the Explosive Substances Act, 1908. The prosecution's case was that on the evening of April 10, 2022, a Ram Navami Sunday, a mob of over a dozen men had descended on Bhatwadi Mohalla armed with stones and petrol bombs, torching and ransacking the homes of six residents and causing losses running into lakhs of rupees.

But the court's own reading of the evidence unravelled that narrative. Of the thirteen witnesses examined by the prosecution, eight, including the complainants themselves, failed to identify a single accused in court, and were declared hostile without yielding any material against the men in the dock. The court noted that mere recognition of a face by a witness "does not by itself prove involvement in the crime, unless the witness specifically states that the person recognised was among those who committed it."

The case then rested almost entirely on the testimony of one witness, Vaishnavi Jain, who claimed to be an eyewitness. The court found her account riddled with contradictions on the number of assailants, the timing of the attack and even whether the attackers' faces were covered, contradictions that only deepened when set against the statements of her own father and brother, who were also examined as witnesses. Her father and brother told the court that the rioters had their faces covered with cloth, directly at odds with her claim of identifying the accused by face.

Compounding matters, no test identification parade was conducted during investigation, and her statement under Section 161 of the CrPC was recorded 51 days after the incident, a delay the prosecution could not explain. "Evidence has to be weighed and not counted," the court observed, invoking the Supreme Court's 1957 ruling in Vadivelu Thevar v. State of Madras, while adding that even the testimony of a solitary witness could sustain a conviction, provided it was "wholly reliable" and free of doubt, a standard it found this witness did not meet.

The court also placed weight on the forensic report from the State Forensic Science Laboratory, Sagar, on glass fragments and burnt residue seized from the site, which found no traces of petrol, diesel or kerosene, undercutting the prosecution's claims of petrol bomb attacks and rendering the Explosive Substances Act charges equally unproven.

Public Prosecutor Yuvraj Gujrathi represented the State. Advocate Harish Kumar Tripathi appeared for accused Ibadat Ali, while advocates Rekha Shrivastava and M.A. Khan represented the remaining ten accused. The men had already spent between 462 and 827 days in custody before being released on bail, with their bonds now set to remain in force for six months under Section 437-A of the CrPC.

The 2022 Khargone violence, which erupted along the Ram Navami procession route, left dozens injured, including police personnel, and forced a curfew lasting over three weeks in the town. More than twenty other cases arising from the same clashes remain pending before courts in the district, meaning Monday's acquittal is unlikely to be the final word on the violence that shook Khargone that April.

Case Title: State of Madhya Pradesh v. Ibadat and Others.