Court hits out against police, civil authorities

NEW DELHI: Upholding the sentence awarded to 70 convicts for rioting in Trilokpuri during the 1984 anti-sikh riots, the Delhi High Court on Wednesday hit out against the police and civil authorities.

Justice R K Gauba said that the allegations against the police of making an endeavour to ensure those guilty could escape were “correct and well founded”.

“... In the considered view of this court, it is not only the police that failed in not (promptly) registering the crimes or collecting all possible or requisite evidence (before it was lost forever) but the other agencies including prosecution, and the court, that also failed to rise to the occasion or live up to the task,” the court said in its judgment.

The single-judge bench also noted that the “failure of the police, and the civil authorities, in controlling the situation, or meeting the challenge, by enforcing the law has been chronicled not only in the media reports but also found to be a fact in decisions of the courts of law, in various cases brought at almost each level of the judicial hierarchy, as indeed recorded in the reports of numerous Commissions of inquiry or Committees that were set up in the decades that have followed.”

The court also noted that the “manner, in which the case was handled, or lingered, at the stage of committal proceedings before the Magistrate, was designed to ensure the case would not proceed with the promptitude it deserved.”

The judge also said police forces, and the civil administration, did not take timely or effective action to prevent the riotous conditions from spiraling out of hand.

“The criminal law process began, but hesitatingly and belatedly. The fact that these cases have continued to linger in the courts at the stage of trial or appeals or revisions till date itself is an indicator of the reality that the response of the law has been tardy, ineffective and highly unsatisfactory,” the judge said. “The local police did not have the capacity to even keep them in proper custody as a large number of arrestees were kept overnight in the verandah or courtyard of the police station...”

“Such difficulties during the period of riots may have been for reasons beyond the control of everyone. But, when the charge sheets had been filed, the committal court did not have the capacity, or the wherewithal, to conduct the proceedings,” it added.