India, Aug. 13 -- The Delhi high court has set aside a nearly 40-year-old verdict that acquitted four men in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case and ordered a retrial, saying the trial was conducted in a "hasty manner" and that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) failed to make sufficient efforts to collect evidence.

The case concerned the killing of Harbhajan Singh in Ghaziabad's Raj Nagar on November 1, 1984 - a day after then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination. According to his wife, a group of men attacked and set her husband ablaze and also torched their home.

In May 1986, a trial court acquitted the four accused of arson and murder, citing contradictions between the woman's statements to police and in court, as well as the...