Mail Today
February 10, 2009
HC raps police for framing five in ’84 riots case
By Mail Today Bureau in New Delhi
THE Delhi High Court on Monday slammed the city police for implicating five men in the 1984 anti- Sikh riots case and allowing the real culprits to escape.
It also termed the police investigation as inefficient and inadequate.
“ Serious crimes were committed in the wake of the riots but inadequate and insufficient investigations have enabled the actual perpetrators of the crimes to slip through the net of justice,” noted a division bench of Justices B. D. Ahmed and V. B. Gupta.
The bench upheld the trial court’s order acquitting the five accused — Ravinder Singh, Daya Shankar, Raghbir Singh, Ram Avtar and Ramesh. They were accused of looting a factory at Okhla on November 1, 1984.
“ This is a classic example of the state implicating innocent persons to solve a riot case... the arrest of the respondents ( accused persons) was made in a premeditated and designed manner, aimed only at working out the present case with scant regard for actual culpability or involvement of arrested persons,” the bench said.
Expressing anguish over the manner in which the police ‘ recovered’ articles to prove the guilt of the alleged culprits, the bench said, “ The police, in their overzealousness to solve this case, made unbelievable recoveries of articles from jhuggi dwellers and made them face trial for about a quarter century.” The court said the police investigation was shoddy and full of suspicion.
The police had proceeded on the basis of a statement by Bhan Singh, a security guard at Mohan Machine Coca- Cola factory.
He said he had seen a 2,000- strong mob armed with lathis and weapons pelting stones at the factory and setting the factory vehicle on fire.
The police said Singh heard people saying the owner of the property was a Sikh and they would take revenge for the then PM Indira Gandhi’s death.
The police had arrested five people and charged them under various sections of the IPC.
|
