India, Aug. 12 -- The Delhi High Court has overturned a 40-year-old verdict that had acquitted four individuals in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case and ordered a retrial, observing that the earlier proceedings were conducted in a "hasty manner" and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) failed to undertake sufficient efforts to collect the evidence.

The case pertained to the killing of a Sikh man in Ghaziabad's Raj Nagar area, a day after then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination. The man's wife had alleged that certain persons attacked and set her husband and her house on fire, resulting in his death. However, in May 1986, the trial court acquitted the four accused of charges of arson and murder, citing contradictions between the ...