Former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar’s counsel on Tuesday accused the CBI of tutoring a prosecution witness. He alleged that the witness’s answers to his queries were contrary to what he had said to the probe agency during the investigation.
The counsel was cross-examining the witness, Joginder Singh, in an 1984 anti-Sikh riot case in Sultanpuri in north-west Delhi. The witness is also a complainant in the matter.
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Sajjan Kumar and others are facing trial in the case. Kumar is at present serving imprisonment for remainder of his life in a different anti-Sikh riot case following his conviction by the Delhi High Court last December.
Joginder Singh informed the court that certain facts mentioned in his police statement were false. He refuted the statement recorded in his police statement that he ran away from his house when a mob barged into his house and looted household articles.
The witness’s cousin Surjit Singh was killed in the riot. Joginder Singh had said in a police statement that he had run away from his house when the mob attacked it, therefore, he could not recognise anyone.
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When the accused’s counsel drew the witness’s attention to his police statement where he had neither named the accused nor the victim killed in the riot, the witness denied that he had not named Sajjan Kumar as one of the accused and shared the details about the victim with the probe agency. He added that he did not know whether the police recorded it or not.
The next date of trial is April 11 when his cross-examination will continue. The 1984 riots broke out following the assassination of then PM Indira Gandhi.