New Delhi, India: A local court has acquitted four persons, including three Delhi Police officials, in a case related to November 1984 Sikh pogrom. While acquitting the accused in a case related to the killing of three members of a Sikh family the court held that the complainant and witnesses turned hostile and contradicted their earlier statements.
Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau acquitted then Station House Officer (SHO) of Nangloi Police Station, Ram Pal Singh Rana, then sub-inspector Dalel Singh, then Head Constable Karam Singh and Satpal Gupta of offences punishable under the IPC, including murder, rioting, kidnapping and threatening to give false evidence.
Proceedings against two other accused — Prem Chand Jain and Ram Niwas — were abated as they expired during the pendency of the trial.
File Photo: Sikhs were burnt alive during 1984 Sikh Genocide
While acquitting the accused, the court noted that the testimony of complainant Gurbachan Singh, whose three family members were allegedly burnt to death by the accused on November 1, 1984, was inconsistent and he repeatedly changed his stand.
It also noted that Gurbachan Singh had claimed in his affidavit before Justice Ranganath Commission in 1985 that the three policemen and Satpal Gupta had killed his father and two brothers, but during his deposition in the court in 2004 he did not specify the names of the accused persons and also resiled from his earlier statement that he saw his relatives being burnt to death in front of him.
“No reliance can be placed on such uncorroborated version and the statement being contradictory, inconsistent which suffer from material contradictions, improvements and after thought embellishments,” the court said.
“I hereby hold that Gurbachan Singh is a non-credible, unreliable and untrustworthy witness whose testimony on the face of it is tainted with a sense of extreme hatred and vengeance for the ruling party of that time,” the judge said.
It is notable that high ups in the Congress party and the Indian administration perpetrated the Sikh genocidal violence against the Sikhs in November 1984, in which thousands of Sikhs were massacred throughout India. In a recent TV interview Congress Party’s vice-president Rahul Gandhi unwillingly admitted that “some” of the congressmen (Congress Party’s men) were “probably” involved in November 1984 massacre of the Sikhs.
Culprits of the genocidal massacres of Nov. 1984 have enjoyed impunity and high political posts during past three decades where as the victims of the massacre were left to perish as the justice was blatantly denied in these cases.