New Delhi, March 29
A Delhi court on Thursday sentenced three persons to life imprisonment for lynching three Sikhs in the capital during the 1984 anti-sikh riots here that killed thousands of the community, observing that posterity would not pardon such wanton carnage.
Additional Sessions Judge Rajendra Prasad sentenced Harprasad Bhardwaj, R.P. Tiwari and Jagdish Giri on charges of lynching Head Constable Niranjan Singh, his son and son-in-law and later setting fire to their bodies during the anti-Sikh violence in the national capital and some other parts of the country.
The court also imposed a penalty of Rs.5,000 on each of the convicted.
Two other accused Suraj Giri and a woman Kamlesh - were acquitted for want of evidence.
Pronouncing the verdict, the judge rejected the prosecution plea for death sentence, ruling that the case did not fall in the category of the rarest of rare cases to warrant death sentence.
"Rigorous life imprisonment would meet the ends of justice," Judge Shastri said.
The judge observed, "Killing of innocent persons due to communal reasons is an indelible blot in the history of human civilisation...We will hardly be pardoned by the generations to come for such a carnage".
The trio were convicted by the court on March 26 under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code including rioting armed with deadly weapon and murder.
They were convicted for leading a mob on Nov 1 and attacking the house of the complainant Harminder Kaur in 1984 in an east Delhi locality.
— IANS
