SIT arrests 4 over 1984 anti-Sikh riots case

KANPUR (UP): The Special Investigation Team (SIT), probing the mass killings during the antiSikh riots in 1984, arrested four men accused of setting a building to fire in which three persons were burnt to death, a senior official said on Thursday.

The arrests were made on Wednesday by the SIT, headed by DIG Balendu Bhushan Singh, from the Ghatampur area of Kanpur. The SIT, constituted by the Uttar Pradesh government on May 27, 2019, on the orders of the Supreme Court, has been probing the anti-Sikh riots’ cases for the last three years and efforts are on to nab more suspects, DIG Singh told PTI.

It had identified 96 persons as prime suspects, of which 22 have died. Complete information about 11 suspects was gathered and it helped the SIT to nab four of them, he said.

The four arrested accused were identified as Saifullah, Yogendra Singh, Vijay Narayan Singh and Abdul Rahman, all sexagenarian residents of the Ghatampur area.

They have been charged under Indian Penal Code sections 396 (dacoity with murder) and 336 (act endangering life or safety of others), he said, adding they have been sent to jail.

Elaborating further, the DIG said the four arrested accused had accompanied dozens of others in a couple of buses to reach Nirala Nagar for setting the house of one Gurudyal Singh on fire in 1984. There were 12 families residing at Gurudyal’s house as tenants and during the attack, three persons were burnt alive. A rioter, identified as Rajesh Gupta, was also shot dead during cross-firing, he added.

The SIT was formed to re-investigate the cases of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that had led to 127 casualties in Kanpur.