Ensure full justice to anti-Sikh riots victims
By
The New Indian Express
03rd May 2013 07:16 AM
As the protest against the acquittal of Congress leader Sajjan Kumar
in a 1984 anti-Sikh riot case refuses to subside, the ruling Congress
has reason to be worried about its political repercussions. What many of
the protesters do not realise is that the judge, who heard the case and
against whom a shoe was hurled, is not to blame. He could have gone
only by the evidence produced before him by the investigating agency,
i.e., the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Instead of barking up
the wrong tree, they should have protested against the conduct of the
CBI, which has been behaving like a handmaiden of the government,
despite all claims of having been invested with autonomy.
The fact is that the Congress never wanted the police to investigate the charge that some of its leaders, including Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler, had led the mobs that attacked the Sikhs in Delhi following Indira Gandhi’s assassination. An attempt was made to treat the killing and looting spree that the capital witnessed as a consequence like the earth that shakes when a banyan tree is uprooted. Small wonder that the present case against Sajjan Kumar was registered only in 2005. What forced the government to act was the recommendation of the G.T. Nanavati Commission, appointed by the NDA government in 2000, to go into the whole gamut of the 1984 riots.
If the case has fallen it is because the CBI, which had once concluded that there was no actionable charge against Sajjan Kumar, did a shoddy job of probing the case and producing hard evidence against the Congress leader. Of course, all is not yet lost. The CBI has one more opportunity to prove that it is not “duty-bound” to protect the accused by appealing against the trial court’s verdict. It is not uncommon for the higher courts to punish those who were acquitted by the lower courts, as in the Suryanelli rape case in which the Supreme Court has rejected the Kerala High Court decision acquitting all but one.
The fact is that the Congress never wanted the police to investigate the charge that some of its leaders, including Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler, had led the mobs that attacked the Sikhs in Delhi following Indira Gandhi’s assassination. An attempt was made to treat the killing and looting spree that the capital witnessed as a consequence like the earth that shakes when a banyan tree is uprooted. Small wonder that the present case against Sajjan Kumar was registered only in 2005. What forced the government to act was the recommendation of the G.T. Nanavati Commission, appointed by the NDA government in 2000, to go into the whole gamut of the 1984 riots.
If the case has fallen it is because the CBI, which had once concluded that there was no actionable charge against Sajjan Kumar, did a shoddy job of probing the case and producing hard evidence against the Congress leader. Of course, all is not yet lost. The CBI has one more opportunity to prove that it is not “duty-bound” to protect the accused by appealing against the trial court’s verdict. It is not uncommon for the higher courts to punish those who were acquitted by the lower courts, as in the Suryanelli rape case in which the Supreme Court has rejected the Kerala High Court decision acquitting all but one.
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