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Day after
they burnt the husband, mobs returned to kill son and son-in-law
Justice took 23 years more in arriving
WSN Network
 NEW DELHI: One day, the mob burnt alive
her husband. Next day it returned to kill her son and son-in-law.
Indian establishment remained apathetic. Thousands others had met
with the same fate but the men accused roamed free, won elections
and enjoyed the spoils of power games. For 12 long years, harminder
kaur did not even approach the law, forget about securing justice.
In 1996, the case was registered. And 23 years after her family
members were burnt or cut to pieces, and her life destroyed, she had
given up hope. So broken was Harminder Kaur that she did not even
bother to go to the Delhi court to hear the verdict.
The Delhi Court on Monday convicted the three men for lynching three
members of her family in the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom. Additional
Sessions Judge Rajender Kumar Shastri held three accused --
Harparsad Bhardwaj, R P Tiwari and Jagdish Giri-- guilty of killing
three members of a Sikh family including a Delhi Police Head
Constable.
Former Union Minster H K L Bhagat was also named as one of the
accused in the case but was later discharged as the evidence against
him was found to be insufficient.
The accused had led a mob on November 1 and 2 and attacked the house
of complainant Harminder Kaur in 1984 in an East Delhi locality
after anti-Sikh riots broke out following the assassination of then
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
The ASJ, however, acquitted a woman accused Kamlesh and Suraj Giri
of the charges due to lack of evidence. The quantum of sentence was
still to be pronounced.
According to the prosecution, Kaur's husband Niranjan Singh, a head
constable with the Delhi Police, who was on duty at Shahdara Railway
Station on November 1, 1984, was lynched and set ablaze by a violent
mob led by the accused.
The accused had earlier chased him down before killing him in front
of his house at Mansarovar Park. Her 17-year-old son Gurpal Singh
and son-in-law Mahender Singh were killed the next day by the
accused.
The FIR in the case was lodged in 1996 when Kaur, who survived the
riot, filed an affidavit with the Jain and Banerjee Committee
constituted to look into the anti-Sikh riot cases.
Commenting on the judgement, India's The Tribune newspaper which
heavily focusses on Punjab said "the phrase 'better late than never'
becomes a meaningless jumble of words when the woman who saw her
husband, son and son-in-law murdered brutally in the 1984 riots has
to wait for 23 years to see three of the killers convicted."
"It is not only a classic example of too late, but also of too
little...Politicians who masterminded the horror have as good as
escaped punishment. Everyone knows their role but they have managed
to ensure that the trail goes cold and there is not “sufficient
evidence” against them," the newspaper not particularly known for
any pro-Sikh bias, said.
28 March 2007
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