The People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) has flagged a ‘delay in justice’ to the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, highlighting that only 13 cases are being fought in court out of about 650 FIRs that had been registered against perpetrators of the massacre. The 1984 riots had left around 2,756 people dead.
PUDR’s report, ‘Delhi 1984: A Long Aftermath’, which was released on Monday, questions the low number of convictions even after 41 years.
Minimal convictions
The report said the last high-profile conviction in one of the cases was that of Sajjan Kumar, a former Congress leader, in 2018. The S. Muralidhar Bench in the case had called the incidents between November 1 and 4, 1984 “crimes against humanity”, that will “continue to shake the collective conscience of society for a long time”.
After the directions of the Nanavati Commission, which was established to investigate the incidents of the riot, Delhi Police registered a total of 650 FIRs in the matter. PUDR secretary Paramjeet Singh said 442 people were convicted initially, out of which 89 were convicted in a single case. Even amongst the 89, 15 were later acquitted, he added. “Most of these cases are not of murder but of unlawful assembly and rioting. Murder convictions may be expected only in a handful of cases,” he said.
