Lost years pose challenge to SIT on anti Sikh riots

The team of two police officers and a retired judge were in February 2015 tasked to probe the riots and the murders that happened on Delhi streets for 48 hours after the assassination.

Last month, the SIT managed to secure a conviction in one of the 60 cases it has reinvestigated since being constituted (it examined 293 but said only 60 could be reopened). There were 52 other cases that were reinvestigated but reached a dead end.

This statistic is important, especially in the wake of the most high-profile conviction in the riots cases — that of Congress leader Sajjan Kumar, who was sentenced to life by Delhi high court earlier this week. Kumar’s conviction came not on account of a reinvestigation by SIT but on an appeal against a 2013 lower court order by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The 52 cases reached a dead end simply because a lot has happened in the past three decades: records went missing, important eyewitnesses did not remember a thing, and many refused to speak to the police team, perhaps out of fear, but in many cases, also because they didn’t want to reopen old wounds. In two cases, all the 13 accused had died of natural causes.

The court accepted the team’s plea of being unable to proceed in the investigation despite its best efforts. Hindustan Times reviewed old records to understand why the 52 cases reached a dead end.

In another case, in mid-2017, the team knocked at the doors of a house in Bhatinda, Punjab. The widowed woman and her daughter who lived there had left Delhi after the riots.

The young woman, who lost her father in the riots, opened the door but refused to talk to the police team. Records show that in at least nine cases, the relatives of the riot victims refused to talk to the police. In another case, the complainant whose brother-in-law was murdered, became mentally disturbed and went missing two decades ago.

The three-member team is the first that has been formed to probe the riots. Last month, in one of the cases it reinvestigated, the court awarded death sentence to a west Delhi resident while convicting another to life imprisonment.

“Our efforts paid off but 34 years is a long time. A lot has changed.

There were no mobile phones so there could not be any audio or video evidence of the cases. In 1984, the BJP had less than five MPS while the Congress was in power. Today, the BJP is everywhere with the highest numbers in Parliament while the Congress has been reduced to less than 60 seats. Or is it less than 50?” said a police officer who was once part of the SIT.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court signed off on the creation of a two-man SIT to look into the 186 cases closed by the 2015 SIT without further probe.