HC scraps acquittal of 4 in '84 riots case
New Delhi, Aug. 13 -- 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 woman's statements to the police and in court, as well as the delay in filing the complaint.
A bench of justices Subramanian Prasad and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar was acting on a petition initiated on its own to determine the correctiveness of the 1986 verdict, after it prima facie found fault in the manner of investigation and termed it as "perfunctory."
The proceedings were initiated, after the court observed that the same was being cited in appeals filed by five individuals - including Khokhar, Captain Bhagmal, and Girdhari Lal, Mahender Yadav, Balwan's brother Krishan Khokhar- against a 2013 trial court ruling that convicted them in the murders involving five Sikhs in the same locality and neither the state nor the victims had appealed the 1986 verdict.
The bench in its verdict delivered on Monday, observed that the trial court's erroneous decision resulted in "miscarriage of justice to the man's wife and children and deprived them of their fundamental right to "fair trial." The CBI the court said in its 48-page ruling, also failed to undertake efforts for tracing the deceased's corpse coupled with the articles stolen from the house and failure to order "re investigation" 40 years after the incident, would result in turning a Nelson's eye to the society's needs and victim's rights of a "comprehensive free and fair probe."
The judges said that trial court "gravely erred" in concluding that there existed a contradiction in the woman's testimony, there was enough material available to impeach her testimony and the CBI while probing the matter failed to undertake "sufficient efforts" to associate all natural witnesses during investigation, including the deceased's children who were present at the time of the incident and any neighbours....
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