NEW DELHI: Home minister Amit Shah on Thursday said Delhi Police, with the help of facial recognition software, had identified 1,922 rioters who could be seen burning, attacking and killing people in videos and social media footage and policemen were looking for them.Replying to a debate in the Rajya Sabha on the Delhi riots , Shah said the perpetrators had been identified by a detailed scrutiny of videos, including those accessed by the media, and by trawling through the database of driving licences and voter IDs of Delhi and four adjoining districts of Uttar Pradesh. Forty special teams were assigned to track down the suspects, he added.The home minister blamed the violence on the insecurity of Muslims because of the false propaganda on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the exercise to update the National Population Register (NPR).He said it was time that all political parties joined hands to dispel doubts that CAA was meant to strip a particular section of citizenship or that the citizenship of individuals would be called into doubt if they were unable to provide details sought during the NPR update.“Enough is enough. Let us come together to remove the doubts,” Shah said as he offered to host a delegation of opposition parties led by leader of opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad to allay their suspicions.“Muslims are being misled that they will lose their citizenship. Let me tell you no one’s citizenship is being taken away. This law is only meant to give citizenship. No one from the minority community, our Muslim brothers and sisters, should believe any rumours,” Shah said.When Congress member Kapil Sibal said the problem lay in NPR procedures and the questions enumerators would ask, Shah said, “No documents will be asked for NPR. Moreover, people are free to fill up the information on the NPR form that they have and leave columns that they don’t want to fill up. No one will be put in the ‘D’ (doubtful) category.”The appeal for collaboration followed a sharp debate in which opposition members attacked the government for the riots which they said was a fallout of BJP’s communal politics.In his reply, Shah alternated between aggression and reasonableness. Like in the Lok Sabha, he deployed details to defend Delhi Police against charges of failure and inaction, built his case about misleading and provocative statements made by those opposed to the CAA being the trigger for the riots and vowed to punish the guilty.“Those who think they can get away by disappearing are mistaken. We will smoke them out,” he said and promised that the government would punish the rioters irrespective of their caste, religion and political affiliation.Shah defended the use of facial recognition software to identify the rioters. While saying that Delhi Police would adhere to the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court for protection of privacy and would not use Aadhaar data to identify the guilty, he asked whether those accused of killing, arson and violence could invoke the right to privacy. “No one should be bothered about privacy rights of those who have killed people and damaged property,” he said.Reiterating that the riots were a conspiracy, he said, “We had information prior to February 24 that money has been brought from abroad and even domestic channels and distributed among people. We started investigation but unfortunately, the riots happened. Five persons have been arrested for the crime so far.”As for the charge that the riots were a “state-sponsored” project, he asked why any government would engineer such violence when the world’s most powerful person, US President Donald Trump, was being hosted by the prime minister.Shah took on the opposition over hate speeches, claiming speeches at Ramlila Maidan on December 14 against CAA manifested in protests the next day at Shaheen Bagh. “We are not against peaceful protests. People can protest but there is a place for it. Here, it is about public inconvenience,” Shah said in the context of Shaheen Bagh.He also defended his party’s record on communal riots, saying 76% of deaths in riots were occurred during Congress rule. He listed riots that happened post-Independence and said it was “not in the nature of BJP to instigate riots but to check them”.