HC tells 1984 riot victims to contact top cop

The Delhi high court on Wednesday asked the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots to approach the Delhi police commissioner for action against police personnel responsible for the alleged disappearance of a chargesheet that named Congress leader Sajjan Kumar as an accused in one of the cases, reports Harish V Nair.

The Delhi high court on Wednesday asked the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots to approach the Delhi police commissioner for action against police personnel responsible for the alleged disappearance of a chargesheet that named Congress leader Sajjan Kumar as an accused in one of the cases.

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“File a complaint with the police commissioner. Let him act in accordance with the law. If he does not take action then come back to the court. We cannot directly order registration of a FIR against the errant officers and thus expand the scope of the probe,” a bench comprising of Chief Justice D Murugesan and Justice V K Jain said.

The FIR was registered in 1991 in connection with the killing of four people in Nangloi during the riots. The case is being probed by the CBI.

The high court was responding to a petition filed by the ‘1984 carnage justice committee’ seeking action against police officials responsible for keeping the chargesheet under wraps.

The committee’s lawyer HS Phoolka told the court that the chargesheet had remained in cold storage despite being cleared for filing by a sessions court last year.

The chargesheet had been “missing” for 18 years, after it was illegally clubbed with another case in 1992 (in which Kumar did not figure as an accused).

It was after an intervention by the Delhi HC, which had appointed special prosecutors in the anti-Sikh riot cases, that the missing chargesheet was traced.