New Delhi, (Samajweekly) The Lieutenant Governor (L-G) of Delhi, V.K. Saxena, has granted approval for the prosecution to file an appeal in the Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court’s judgement acquitting 12 murder accused in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots-related case.
In this case, eight people were killed and one person was injured in the Nangloi area of West Delhi.
The L-G approved the Home Department’s proposal to file a special leave petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court to challenge the high court’s decision dated August 9, 2023.
The high court had dismissed the appeal against the trial court’s verdict, which had acquitted all the accused.
The high court cited an inordinate delay of 27 years in filing the appeal and found the grounds presented by the state to be unjustifiable.
The proposal for the SLP argued that the high court had not considered the merits of the case and had dismissed the state’s appeal solely due to the delay in its filing.
It noted that the Supreme Court had directed the formation of a special investigation team (SIT) to further investigate the 1984 anti-Sikh riots cases, and the present case was one of the 186 cases under the SIT’s purview.
The SIT had recommended that an appeal be filed with an application for condonation of delay. Although the L-G approved filing the appeal in 2021, the criminal leave petition was filed in 2023.
The additional public prosecutor (APP) has said that this case is fit for filing an SLP or appeal before the Supreme Court.
The APP argued that this case involves a crime against humanity, and it referred to observations by the Supreme Court of Bangladesh in a similar matter related to mass killings in 1971.
Additionally, the standing counsel (criminal) for the Delhi High Court opined that there was a delay of only 274 days, not 27 years as observed by the high court, and that the delay should be calculated from the date of the SIT’s report, not from the trial court’s judgement in 1995.
The 12 accused persons in the case are facing charges related to the murder of eight individuals during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Nangloi.
The incident is connected to the case titled “the State vs. Maikale Ram & Ors.”, which arose from FIR No. 501/1992, covering various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
In the specific incident, a group of accused persons and their associates were involved in the murder of eight people in Amar Colony, Nangloi, on November 1, 1984.
