The Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday said it will appoint a supervisory committee comprising two former apex court judges to determine whether the probe into 241 anti-Sikh riot cases was properly conducted before they were closed by a Special Investigation Team (SIT).
The SC had been informed in March that 199 anti-Sikh riots cases were closed as the trail had gone cold. Investigation was on in another 59 cases.
Panel has three months
Appearing before a Bench led by Justice Dipak Misra, Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta submitted that another 42 cases have been closed while chargesheets have been filed in 12 and investigation is pending in another five cases.
To this, the Bench said it will appoint a two-member panel to go through the records of the 241 cases closed and confirm that there is nothing more to do on them.
The names of the two judges will be finalised after consultations and the committee will report back to the court in three months, the court recorded.
The case is next scheduled for November 28.
In March, the Bench had decided to investigate the reasons that motivated the SIT to close such a large number of the riots cases. Senior advocate Arvind Datar, for the petitioners drawn from victims of the riots, submitted that none of the closure reports were filed in a court.
The court had in March even pointed out that there was “some dispute” on whether closure reports were filed in any of the 199 cases.
A total of 3,325 people were killed in the 1984 riots in which Delhi alone accounted for 2,733 deaths, while the rest occurred in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and other States.
No progress
The SIT was set up on February 12, 2015, following a recommendation by the Home Ministry-appointed Justice (retd) G. P. Mathur committee.
The SIT is headed by Pramod Asthana, an IPS officer of 1986 batch. It has Rakesh Kapoor, a retired district and sessions judge, and Kumar Gyanesh, an additional deputy commissioner of Delhi Police, as its members.
The SIT had questioned Congress leader Sajjan Kumar thrice and asked him questions about the allegations that he instigated a mob in Janakpuri on November 1, 1984, which led to the killing of Sohan Singh and his son-in-law Avtar Singh.
