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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dalvinder Singh Grewal" data-source="post: 226616" data-attributes="member: 22683">Chapter 14 Violence and PunishmentsPolitical Complicity in the ViolenceVictim and witness accounts and affidavits placed Congress Party leaders at the site of rioting, actively participating in the violence or instigating the mobs. Numerous affidavits submitted to Nanavati commission accused Congress parliament member Sajjan Kumar of instigating rioting mobs to kill Sikhs, and loot and burn their property. Amarjit Kaur of Chand Nagar in south Delhi specifically named Kumar as the person who led the mob that killed her husband by burning him alive. Several residents of Sultanpuri in west Delhi named Sajjan Kumar as instigating the mobs on the morning of November 1, saying “Sikhs have killed our Indira Gandhi, now kill the Sikhs, loot and burn.” In some cases, victims alleged that the police refused to put down Kumar’s name when they went to file complaints. Kumar was eventually charged with murder in two cases. He was acquitted in one case and a trial is pending in the other. There is also an appeal pending in Delhi High Court against his acquittal. Several other Congress Party leaders, members of parliament, and councilors were specifically named in the affidavits for their alleged complicity or participation in the violence. While examining the evidence presented against Congress member of parliament Jagdish Tytler, the Nanavati Commission stated: Relying upon all this material, the Commission considers it safe to record a finding that there is credible evidence against Shri Jagdish Tytler to the effect that very probably he had a hand in organizing attacks on Sikhs. The Commission, therefore, recommends to the Government to look into this aspect and take further action as may be found necessary. Despite these allegations, Tytler’s political fortunes rose and he became the minister for civil aviation in the Rajiv Gandhi government. Following the Nanavati Commission report, the Central Bureau of Investigation was asked to investigate allegations against him. Twice, in 2007 and again in 2009, the Central Bureau of Investigation cleared Tytler but in April 2013 a court in Delhi ordered the agency to conduct further investigation into the case. The investigation is pending. The Nanavati Commission found that Congress member of parliament from east Delhi, HKL Bhagat, and local Congress leaders Rampal Saroj and Dr. Ashok from Trilokpuri, one of the worst-affected neighborhoods in Delhi, had taken “active part in this anti-Sikh riots.” And yet the commission failed to recommend any further action against them, citing their acquittals in criminal cases even though it had found that in most cases, the accused had been acquitted due to poor investigations by the police. Bhagat’s political career also rose after the riots and he went on to become a cabinet minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s government. He was tried in two cases but was acquitted. In one case, the primary witness turned hostile amid reports of being intimidated. An appeal was pending in the second case but he was deemed unfit for trial because of declining mental health due to Alzheimer’s disease. Bhagat died in 2005. Only two senior Congress leaders were convicted: former councilor Balwan Khokhar was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, while a former member of the legislative assembly, Mahendra Yadav, was given a three-year prison term for rioting. Yadav is currently out on bail. Most senior Congress Party leaders implicated in the violence were never prosecuted or were acquitted due to the poor quality of investigations and evidence collected by the police. Several judges in their rulings cited lapses in police investigation as the reason for acquittals. For instance, Judge S.N. Dhingra in State v. Ram Pal Saroj, a trial that began 11 years after the attacks, remarked that “the police investigation in each of the riot cases filed in the court has been wanting in quality.” The long delays in prosecution have also led to the deaths of complainants, witnesses, as well as perpetrators in several riot-related cases. Noting such delays, Judge Dhingra said: The manner in which the trail of the riot cases had proceeded is unthinkable in any civilised country. In fact, the inordinate delay in trial of the rioters had legitimised the violence and the criminality. A system which permits the legitimised violence and criminals through the instrumentalities of the state to stifle the investigation, cannot be relied upon to dispense basic justice uniformly to the people. It amounts to a total wiping out of the rule of law. Police Complicity in the Violence The role of the Delhi police, both during the riots and during investigations, has been scrutinized by several of the official investigations as well as independent lawyers and civil society organizations. Most investigations and victims’ accounts said that in many cases the police failed to file complaints against the accused. There was also evidence to show that the police often filed FIRs that did not have columns for the names of perpetrators or the deceased, as well as any facts about the relevant incidents. Instead of filing separate FIRs for each incident as is required by law, the police filed a “general, vague, and omnibus type of FIR” combining numerous incidents that took place in different locations and failed to properly investigate the incidents. While recording FIRs, police were reluctant to record murder and often put down lesser charges. For instance, station house officer Ram Mehar Sharma, of Gandhi Nagar police station in east Delhi, told the Nanavati Commission that there was some discussion at the district level and it was decided that all cases of deaths during riots should be registered as offenses under Indian Penal Code section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), and not under section 302 (murder). In the few cases where charges were filed, the police failed to produce proper evidence in court. The Nanavati Commission found that in most of the cases, investigations carried out by the police were “absolutely casual, perfunctory and faulty,” resulting in acquittals. Lawyer Vrinda Grover, in her deposition to the Nanavati Commission in 2002, presented her analysis of judgments in 126 trial court cases. Out of these 126 cases, only 8 cases resulted in conviction while the remaining 118 cases ended in acquittals. Of these 8 convictions, 2 were overturned by the Delhi High Court. Grover told the commission: t is clear that a combination of grave lapses of investigation, shoddy investigation, inordinate delays, insufficient collection evidence, non compliance with legal procedures by the police led to a majority of cases concluding in acquittals. The acquittals were to a very large extent a direct consequence of the incompetent, unprofessional and casual investigation by the police. Allegations of Abetting Violence Several affidavits cited in the Mittal report state that in Trilokpuri, in east Delhi, which had the largest number of killings and some of the most brutal and horrific violence, the police prevented Sikhs from protecting themselves. The Sikh religion requires that men carry a ceremonial dagger, and witnesses alleged that the weapons were confiscated by the police. Instead of protecting Sikhs from violent mobs, in some cases, the police filed false cases against Sikhs who were trying to defend themselves. Police also threatened witnesses, forced them to sign affidavits that favored the police, and understated the numbers of those killed. The Mittal report said there was evidence to suggest that the police “had quietly collected and disposed of the bodies of those whom the mobs were unable to completely burn.” The Mittal report also noted that police log books were manipulated by senior officers to cover their tracks and officials failed to record messages coming in regarding the violence in a bid to escape responsibility and accountability. Moreover, the report found that the Police Control Room appeared to have started rumors such as water being poisoned and trainloads of dead Hindus arriving from Punjab State, creating panic and inciting mobs. Police officials who dared to stop the violence were transferred. Additional Commissioner of Police H.C. Jatav transferred two Sikh police officers from Subzi Mandi police station in north Delhi. Both Additional Commissioner of Police Kewal Singh and Inspector Gurmail Singh were accused of abandoning their positions during the riots but the Mittal report stated that it was clear that they had been removed because they had taken strong action to check the riots on the very first night of October 31 by arresting 90 people, recovering looted property, registering a criminal case, and seeking permission to use force to control the rioting mobs. Police officials who tried to do their jobs faced pressure from local Congress leaders. In one case, according to witnesses and a news reporter, Dharam Dass Shastri, then a Congress member of parliament, went with some local leaders and about 3000 people to the Karol Bagh police station on November 5 to demand the release of rioters arrested for looting. The Nanavati report noted that Shastri and his supporters threatened the police officers with dire consequences if they took any action against the rioters. According to a witness, a senior police official present in the room sided with Shastri and other political leaders against his own junior official who had made the arrests. Lack of Accountability A total number of 147 members of the Delhi police were indicted as a result of the investigations by the Jain-Aggarwal committee and by Kusum Lata Mittal. 25 criminal cases were filed against some of the officers, in most others departmental inquiries were instituted and the officers exonerated. Over the years, the police defended their actions during the riots saying they were under-resourced. Some senior officials said they were unaware of the scope of violence and were not briefed adequately by their junior officers. But both the Mittal report and the Nanavati Commission dismissed such explanations. The Nanavati Commission report noted that as police commissioner, S.C. Tandon was directly responsible for the maintenance of law and order in Delhi and it refused to accept his explanation that he was not properly informed by his subordinates. The report said: There was a colossal failure of maintenance of law and order and as the head of the Police Force, he has to be held responsible for the failure. The course of events do disclose that the attitude of the police force was callous and that he did not remain properly informed about what was happening in the city. Unfortunately, the Nanavati report, even as it found many police officials complicit or guilty, it cited departmental exonerations to avoid recommending further action to hold them to account. The inquiries effectively provided complete impunity to police officials who had failed to do their duty and had been complicit in the deadly violence. In April 2014, a sting investigation by the news website Cobrapost caught several police officials, some of whom were accused of abetting the violence, saying on camera that it was the administration and the senior officials who were responsible for their inaction. Sexual Violence against Women Most investigations conducted into the violence have been largely silent on violence against women. Very few affidavits submitted to the various government commissions discussed it in any detail. In many cases, women preferred to use euphemisms such as “humiliation” or “dishonor” because of social stigma. According to the PUCL-PUDR report, inquiries conducted by a senior police official revealed that “at least four women, their ages ranging from 14 to 50, were gang raped. Later seven cases of rape from Trilokpuri were officially reported by the J.P. Narayan Hospital, Delhi.” Even the earliest commissions had received affidavits from victims alleging rape but failed to probe any further. Padmi Kaur of Sultanpuri area, in her affidavit submitted to the Misra Commission, described an incident that took place on November 1 and named several people in the mob, including Congress leader Brahmanand Gupta: After some time the mob arrived, broke open our door and came inside. They caught hold of my daughter Maina Kaur forcibly and started tearing her clothes….They broke the hands and feet of my daughter and kidnapped her. They confined her in their home for three days. I know some of the persons in the mob… Now my daughter Maina Kaur has fallen ill and has become like a mad girl. The most detailed accounts of sexual abuse were recorded by Madhu Kishwar, the publisher of women’s magazine Manushi. Kishwar recorded the testimonies of several women from Trilokpuri, in east Delhi, the city’s worst-affected neighborhood. Kishwar published the story of Gurdip Kaur, a 45-year-old woman who said that her husband and her three sons were brutally murdered in front of her: “My youngest son stayed in the house with me. He shaved off his beard and cut his hair. But they came into the house. Those young boys, 14 and 16 years old, began to drag my son out even though he was hiding behind me. They tore my clothes and stripped me naked in front of my son. When these young boys began to rape me, my son began to cry and said: “Elder brothers, don’t do this. She is like your mother just as she is my mother.” But they raped me right there, in front of my son, in my house. They were young boys, maybe eight of them. When one of them raped me, I said: “My child, never mind. Do what you like. But remember, I have given birth to children. This child came into the world by this same path.” Kaur said after raping her, the youth allegedly took her youngest son away and burned him alive. Kaur told Kishwar that most women in her neighborhood were raped including 9 and 10-year-old girls. According to journalist Manoj Mitta, about 30 female Sikhs were abducted from Trilokpuri and held captive for over 24 hours at the nearby Chilla village. But there was no investigation and no victim received compensation. Phoolka is well known for spearheading the crusade to seek justice in the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide in New Delhi that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi and resulted in the killing of approximately 2,733 Sikhs and displacement of over 50,000 Sikhs within 2 days. Senior SC advocate Harvinder Singh Phoolka says the delay in cases (such as of Congress leader Jagdish Tytler) are “shameful examples” of the sorry state affairs of the Indian judicial system. Senior Supreme Court advocate H S Phoolka in an interview stated Almost 40 years after the 1984 October-November pogrom of Sikhs in the streets of Delhi following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Special CBI Judge, Rakesh Syal, maintained in his order in the first week of this month that there was not sufficient ground for proceeding against accused Jagdish Tytler under Section 148 IPC (rioting while armed with a deadly weapon or something that can cause death if used as a weapon). But his 57-page verdict concluded that “However, there appear to be sufficient grounds to CBI Case No. 96/2023 Central Bureau of Investigation vs. Sh. Jagdish Tytler Page no. 56 of 57 presumes that the accused has committed offences punishable under Sections 143(unlawful assembly), 147(rioting), 188(disobedience to orders from public servants) and 153 A IPC (crime of promoting enmity between different groups), Sections 295 (injuring or defiling a place of worship), 436 (mischief by fire or explosive substance), 451 ( house-trespass committed to committing an offence), 380 read with Section 149 IPC, and Section 302(Murder) read with Section 109 IPC(Section 109 deals with abetment). Let the charges be framed accordingly against the accused.” What does this mean? It means that a trial against the Congress leader's role in the genocide of innocent Sikhs is practically yet to begin in October after 21 years.</blockquote>

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