New Delhi: More than 40 years after the 1984 anti-Sikh riots followed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination, resulting in brutal killings where the accused walked free, Delhi High Court on Monday ordered retrial in one of the cases. In three other acquittals, HC asked the trial court to “reconstruct” the case records as vital documents, including deposition of witnesses and their statements, are missing.The cases relate to the killing of five Sikhs in the Raj Nagar Part I area in Palam Colony and the burning down of a gurdwara in Raj Nagar Part II, and were lodged at the Delhi Cantt police station. In 2017, HC had reopened these cases after it found that all accused were acquitted by trial courts in 1986, and neither Delhi Police nor CBI appealed. Incidentally, only two of the several accused men are alive.In multiple verdicts, a bench of Justices Subramonium Prasad and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar ordered the retrial of the accused, Ramji Lal Sharma, and the reconstruction of records in three cases against another accused, Balwan Singh Khokhar.HC said it is “mindful” that more than 40 years have passed, but underlined that the case “undoubtedly falls within the category of an ‘exceptional case’ warranting setting aside of the acquittal dated May 28, 1986, and consequent direction for a retrial.”The court noted that the “truth-finding exercise was given a go-by previously” and directed CBI to probe further “since the alternative would entail turning a Nelson’s eye to the needs of the society at large and the rights of victims, including the complainant and her children, to a comprehensive free and fair investigation”.HC also flagged how, in Sharma’s case, the trial court in 1986 “committed several manifest errors of law” that resulted in a “miscarriage of justice”, and a “grave offence of murder and arson with communal overtones” was neither investigated properly nor “tried in right stead”.The court said sufficient efforts were not made to involve all natural witnesses in the probe, including victim Harbhajan Singh’s children who were present at the time of the incident, and/or any neighbours in whose house Singh’s wife and children took shelter after the mob burnt their house down.On the long delay in victims approaching police, HC pointed out that “a bloodbath took place after the assassination and as a result of the violence, widows, children and persons residing in the vicinity ran away for their safety and took shelter elsewhere, which naturally meant they would not have been readily available for investigation”.It said the trial court “failed to factor in the precarious situation and communal tensions which existed in the aftermath of the assassination”.Dealing with the other three cases reopened in 2017, HC noted that apart from the shoddy investigation, trial judges “hardly took any steps to ensure the presence of crucial witnesses, including persons who had witnessed the incident”, leading to missing material evidence.“Valuable lives have been lost in the incidents which form the subject matter of the present cases. Several crucial witnesses, including eyewitnesses to the incident, were not examined on account of insufficient efforts to secure their presence through service of summons at addresses which had been damaged and/or abandoned by such witnesses in the aftermath of the incident,” the court observed.
