Najeeb Ahmed's disappearance: Court orders CBI to present witness statements to Fatima Nafis

This could probably be the most hopeful news that Fatima Nafis got to hear in the past two and a half years. Thirty months after the mysterious disappearance of her son Najeeb Ahmed, the CBI Court in Delhi on Monday ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to give all the documents listed in the annexures A and B of the closure report to Fatima in the next two weeks. 

These documents include call detail records, witness statements and other documents mentioned in the closure report. The CBI had previously denied presenting these documents to Fatima, who is the petitioner in the case. On March 28, the body argued that "there is no provision in law" to present the documents. 

"This is the first hopeful news that we have heard since Najeeb had gone missing," says Haseeb Ahmed, Najeeb's younger brother. "Now we're hopeful that my brother will be back soon and the ones behind his disappearance will be behind the bars," he adds. Fatima was unable to attend the hearing, owing to bad health. 

Najeeb's case was initially investigated by the Vasant Kunj Police, which was subsequently passed on to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Delhi Police, the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police and then the CBI. But neither of them was able to make any headway in the case. A first year MSc Biotechnology student in the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Najeeb disappeared on October 15, 2016. A day after he had gotten into an argument with a few ABVP activists.