Court to decide on CBI's clean chit to Tytler

A local court is likely to pronounce its order today on CBI's probe report giving senior Congress leader and former union minister Jagdish Tytler a clean chit in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case.

A local court is likely to pronounce its order on Tuesday on CBI's probe report giving senior Congress leader and former union minister Jagdish Tytler a clean chit in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case.

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Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Rakesh Pandit, after hearing the arguments of CBI and the counsel for Lakhwinder Kaur, a riot victim who opposed the agency's closure report clearing Tytler, had reserved the order on April seven.

The order assumes importance because if the court accepts CBI's probe report, then the case against Tytler would end. However, in case the court rejects the closure report, it can then issue a summons against the former minister to face the criminal case. The court can also direct the probe agency to further investigate the case, according to legal experts.

CBI had on April two last year cleared the former union minister in its probe report, saying there was nothing to proceed against Tytler as two witnesses California-based Jasbir Singh and Surinder Singh (already dead) were not reliable and their statements were "false and concocted".

The probe agency had claimed that Surinder had changed his versions time and again as he first claimed that he saw Tytler leading a mob on November one, 1984, after the assassination of the then PM Indira Gandhi a day before, and then retracted by claiming that he did not see the politician on that date.