The Hindu : New Delhi News : Four get life term in anti-Sikh riot case

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Aug 28, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

New Delhi

New Delhi

Four get life term in anti-Sikh riot case

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: A decade and a half after their acquittal by a trial court here in an anti-Sikh riots case in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984, the Delhi High Court on Wednesday sentenced four men to life imprisonment.

Setting aside the lower court judgment of 1990, a Division Bench of the Court comprising Justice Manmohan Sarin and Justice S.L. Bhayana said the trial judge was wrong in acquitting the accused.

The trial court had acquitted the four holding that the prosecution had failed to prove the case against them beyond reasonable doubt.

The High Court judgment came on an appeal by the Delhi police against the acquittals.

The prosecution case against the four -- Ram Lal, Surender Pal, Lal Bahadur and Virender Singh -- was that they were part of an unlawful assembly of people who had gathered outside the house of Harjit Kaur at Sagarpur in West Delhi and burnt alive her husband and father-in-law and then stuffed the bodies into gunny bags.

The rioting mob had looted her household articles and set the house on fire. It had also set afire the house of her neighbour where her two daughters had taken shelter following the attack.

All the four accused were her neighbours. “The liability of the unlawful assembly that had gathered outside Ms. Kaur’s house and knew that the crime was likely to occur for which it had gathered is equal to those who commit it,” the Bench observed.

“It is not a common crime. It is one in which the members of a particular community of society have been singled out and murdered. Such crimes should be dealt sternly,” the Bench observed.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi