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New Delhi: The four Muslim men who were killed during the November 2024 survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal district of Uttar Pradesh did not die due to police firing, but succumbed to “crossfire by miscreants present in the crowd belonging to the Turk and Pathan Muslim communities”, a three-member judicial commission probing the violence has concluded.

The probe commission claimed that the violence that took place on November 24, 2024 was “pre-planned” and “primarily the result of abetment by conspiracy hatched” between sitting Samajwadi Party (SP) MP Zia-ur-Rahman Barq, Suhel Iqbal (son of SP MLA Iqbal Mahmood), Zafar Ali (chairperson of the Sambhal Jama Masjid’s managing committee) and others members of the mosque’s management.

Five Muslims were killed during the violence, though official records acknowledged only four deaths: Mohammad Kaif, Naeem, Ayaan, and Bilal. Twenty-eight police personnel were injured, and several vehicles were torched or damaged during the clashes.

A survey of the Mughal-era mosque was hurriedly carried out by a court-appointed advocate commissioner on November 19, 2024, less than three hours after a civil judge senior division passed the order. A second round of survey took place on November 24, but that was marred by large-scale violence. The state government constituted a three-member commission headed by Devendra Kumar Arora, retired judge of the Allahabad high court, to probe the incident.

Retired IAS officer Amit Mohan Prasad, who served under chief minister Yogi Adityanath, and retired IPS officer Arvind Kumar Jain, who was the Director General of Police in 2015, when the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party was in power, were the other two members of the commission.

The commission was tasked with inquiring whether the incident was “sudden or well planned and the result of a criminal conspiracy,” and due to what “reasons and circumstances” the incident took place. A copy of the probe report, which was submitted in 2025, was tabled in the UP assembly on August 5.

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