’84 riots: Two SC ex-judges to go into 241 SIT-closed cases

NEW DELHI:The Supreme Court has named its former judges JM Panchal and KSP Radhakrishnan as members of a supervisory panel appointed by it to scrutinise 241 cases related to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi closed by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) that was formed by the NDA government for a re-probe.

File photo

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 1

The Supreme Court has named its former judges JM Panchal and KSP Radhakrishnan as members of a supervisory panel appointed by it to scrutinise 241 cases related to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi closed by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) that was formed by the NDA government for a re-probe.

The panel will start work from September 5 and submit its report in three months. The Centre will provide the “requisite assistance” to the panel members, who will get “all financial benefits as permissible in law”.

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The panel is to examine SIT’s decision to close 241 cases and opine whether there was justification to do so. The top court has already asked its Registry to hand over all case files to the supervisory panel.

Earlier, the top court had summoned the files of 199 cases. The Centre had submitted photocopies of the files in a sealed cover. Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta had told the Bench that 42 more cases had been closed, taking the total number of such cases to 241.

A three-judge Bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra (now CJI) had on August 16 asked the panel to give its report in three months and fixed November 28 for further hearing. The names of the judges on the panel were made public today.

Senior counsel Arvind Datar and HS Phoolka, who represented petitioner Gurnad Singh, had told the Bench at last hearing that in only nine cases the trial was on. They had demanded that the trial in these cases be conducted on a day-to-day basis. Noting that there was no need to pass another order on this point, the Bench had asked them to show its earlier order to the trial court.

The Bench had also issued a notice to the Uttar Pradesh Government on another petition filed by the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots from Kanpur, demanding an SIT probe into the killing of more than 125 persons.

Asking petitioner’s counsel Prasoon Kumar to hand over a copy of the petition to Uttar Pradesh Additional Advocate General Aishwarya Bhati, it had posted the matter for hearing on September 21.