Anti-Sikh riots: Delhi HC ex-judge Justice Dhingra to head new SIT

New Delhi, Jan 11 : The Supreme Court on Thursday appointed former judge of Delhi High Court Justice S.N. Dhingra to head the new Special Investigation Team (SIT) that will probe 186 anti-Sikh riots cases which were closed by an earlier SIT.

Appointing Justice Dhingra as the new SIT head, the bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said former IPS officer Rajdeep Singh and 2006 batch IPS officer Abhishek Dular would be the other two members of the team.

The top court had on Wednesday (January 10) decided to constitute a new SIT after receiving a report by a Supervisory Committee that said that out of the 241 cases closed by the earlier SIT, 186 were closed without further investigation.

The 241 cases were scrutinised by the Supervisory Committee comprising former Supreme Court Justices J.M. Panchal and K.S. Radhakrishnan.

Rampaging mobs had killed around 3,000 Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere across India in the aftermath of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by two of her security guards on October 31, 1984, in the national capital. The official figure of Sikhs killed was around 2,800.

The top court, by its order of September 1, 2017, had set up the supervisory panel to examine the justification for closure of the anti-Sikh riots cases probed by the earlier SIT.

The committee was given three months to examine the closed cases and submit its report.

The earlier SIT had examined 293 cases. Of these, 55 were closed and no further investigation took place in 186 others.

The court’s order to set up the new SIT came on a petition by Gurlad Singh Kahlon, a member of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee.

Kahlon had contended that the SIT set up in February 2015 to investigate the cases closed earlier for lack of sufficient evidence had utterly failed in carrying out the probe.

IANS