Anti-Sikh riots: SC to take up matter of ATR on Dhingra report after 6 weeks

New Delhi, March 14

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would hear the matter relating to the Action Taken Report (ATR) on Justice SN Dhingra Committee Report on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots after six weeks.

The petitioner’s counsel told a Bench led by Justice AS Bopanna that a brief response to the status report submitted on April 15, 2019, by the Special Investigation Team had been prepared.

“If that be so, the copy of the same be served on the learned counsel for the respondents and be filed in the registry,” the Bench said, posting the matter for hearing after six weeks.

Almost 3,000 people were killed, most of them in Delhi, in the riots that broke out following the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984.

Acting on a petition filed by S Gurlad Singh Kahlon — a former member of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee — the top court had appointed a Special Investigation Team headed by Justice SN Dhingra (retd) to re-investigate 186 cases of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that were reopened.

The Ministry of Home Affairs had on January 15, 2020, informed the Supreme Court that it had accepted the report of the SIT which implicated several Delhi Police personnel and said it would take action accordingly. The Supreme Court had on January 11, 2018, constituted the committee in question.