HC blasts Delhi Police for ‘active connivance’

New Delhi, December 17

The killing of over 2,700 Sikhs in Delhi during the 1984 riots was a “carnage of unbelievable proportions” and the way the Delhi Police acted at that time established their “apathy” and “active connivance” in the brutal murders, the Delhi High Court said today.

The HC, which convicted and sentenced Congress leader Sajjan Kumar to life term for “remainder of his natural life” in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case, blasted the Delhi Police for its “abject failure” in probing the violence following the assassination of then PM Indira Gandhi. It said the police had “indeed turned a blind eye and blatantly abetted the crimes committed by the rioting mob” and the probe conducted by them in those cases was a farce.

A Bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Vinod Goel noted it was “extraordinary” that despite there being 341 deaths in the Delhi Cantonment area alone in four days beginning November 1, 1984, only 21 FIRs were lodged, of which only 15 pertained to death or murder.

“Ultimately, only five bodies were recovered and that too after the intervention of the Army,” the HC said, adding, it is “trite” that for each incident involving offence of murder, a separate FIR had to be registered. The Bench said, “What happened in the aftermath of the assassination of Indira Gandhi was indeed carnage of unbelievable proportions in which over 2,700 Sikhs were murdered in Delhi alone.” Referring to the case on killing of five Sikhs, the Bench said, “The law and order machinery had clearly broken down and it was literally a free for all situation which persisted.”

It said there was no question of clubbing many complaints pertaining to several deaths in one FIR and it was strange that despite widespread killings and bedlam in the area, no mention of that was found in the daily diary register (DDR) maintained by the police.

“It is clear, therefore, that in those chaotic conditions, the local police force was inadequate for the task at hand,” the Bench said.

“Circumstances establish the apathy of the Delhi Police and their active connivance in the brutal murders being perpetrated,” the Bench said.  “As pointed out by the trial court, the state machinery came to a complete standstill in those two or three days when the rioting mobs took to the streets and indulged in acts of violence and killings, and setting properties on fire,” the HC said.

“There was a two-pronged strategy adopted by the attackers. The first was to liquidate all Sikh males and the other was to destroy their residential houses leaving the women and children utterly destitute. The attack on the Raj Nagar Gurdwara was clearly a part of the communal agenda of the perpetrators,” it said. — PTI