New Delhi: As per the media reports the Supreme Court of India (SCI) while giving an impression to deliver justice to the survivors of the November 1984 Sikh genocide, has announced its former judges JM Panchal and KSP Radhakrishnan as members of a supervisory panel appointed by it to scrutinise 241 cases relating to the 1984 Sikh killings in Delhi closed by a Special Investigation Team formed by the NDA government for re-investigation.
Supreme Court of India (SCI) [File Photo]
The panel will start functioning from September 5 and submit its report in three months. The Centre has to provide “requisite assistance” to the panel members who would get “all the financial benefits as permissible in law”, media reports claim.
It is believed that two-judge panel is to examine the decision of the SIT to close 241 cases of the Sikh massacre so as to reconfirm and be sure that justice eludes the Sikhs even after almost 33 years of harassment and bluffing on the part of Indian state. But the SCI has claimed that the panel will study “whether there was justification to close the cases”. The top court has already asked its Registry to hand over the files of these cases to the supervisory panel to start its work.
Earlier, SCI had summoned the files of 199 cases closed by the SIT. The Centre had submitted photo copies of the files of these cases in a sealed cover. “42 more cases had been closed since submission of the files, taking the total number of cases closed to 241” Additional Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta reportedly told to the bench.
Moreover, media sources have reported that a three-judge Bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra (since taken over as CJI) had on August 16 asked the panel to give its report in three months and fixed November 28 for further hearing.
Apparently, senior counsel Arvind Datar and HS Phoolka, who represented petitioner Gurnad Singh, had reportedly told the Bench on the last date that only in nine cases trial was on. They had demanded that the trial in these cases should be conducted on a day-to-day basis.
The Bench had also issued notice to the Uttar Pradesh Government on another petition filed by victims of the 1984 Sikh killings from Kanpur demanding an SIT probe into the murders of more than 125 people. It had asked petitioner’s counsel Prasoon Kumar to hand over a copy of the petition to Uttar Pradesh Additional Advocate-General Aishwarya Bhati and posted the matter for hearing on September 21, notes The Tribune (TT).