New Delhi: Quoting from the work of international legal scholars such as Sir John William Salmond and RWM Dias, the GP Mathur Committee constituted by the current BJP government in India has said “proper investigation of the offences committed (during the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom) was not conducted and some kind of sham effort had been made to give it the shape of investigations.”
The committee, on whose recommendation a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was constituted to probe the November 1984 violence against the Sikhs, also slammed the role of the State and said “in some cases it was a foregone conclusion that conviction was not possible, and in cases where chargesheet was submitted for prosecution of the offenders, the conduct of the cases on behalf of the State was extremely bad”.
The three-member SIT headed by IPS officer Pramod Asthana, which was recently constituted to probe the November 1984 massacres, will file fresh FIRs and even chargesheets in cases that were not investigated.
“From the extracts of various Commissions — the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission, Justice Nanawati Commission and the Jain and Agarwal Committee reports — constituted to probe the case, it has been found that quite often, only one FIR was lodged for separate incidents involving brutal murder of many Sikhs. In a number of cases after assaulting the victims, kerosene was poured on them and they were burnt alive. Each murder or killing was a separate offence under Section 302 IPC, which required proper investigation,” the report states.
It further says, “The investigation in many offences including loot, killings and burning of houses and business establishments have been closed or untraced. It appears from the Jain Committee report that family members who actually saw the commission of crime and were the most important material witnesses, were never produced in court. In some cases only policemen were produced as witnesses and thus there was no evidence on which, any finding of guilt could be recorded and consequently the cases ended in acquittal.”
“The apathy of the state machinery in properly conducting the prosecution of offenders is writ large. In many cases, it was a foregone conclusion that no conviction was possible. A mere formality was done to present a picture that the State has done its duty in investigating the case, submitting the chargesheet and prosecuting the offenders and it was the courts, which gave judgements acquitting the accused. In a criminal case, unless the prosecuting agency acts diligently and produces all the relevant evidence and material, the courts cannot record a finding of guilt and convict an accused. It is on account of apathy of state machinery that many genuine cases where the offenders who were guilty of having committed serious crimes of murder got a verdict of acquittal in their favour,” the report states.