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High Court Allows CBI Appeal Against Sajjan Kumar
July 16, 2004 | Comments Off on High Court Allows CBI Appeal Against Sajjan Kumar
The Delhi High Court has allowed the appeal by the Central Bureau of Investigation against the acquittal of MP Sajjan Kumar in the last case against him, arising from the November 1984 pogroms against Sikhs
The Court had earlier criticized the CBI for failing to file the appeal in a timely manner:
On April 6, the court had given time to the CBI to file an affidavit explaining the particulars of the circumstances that caused the delay in the filing of the appeal.
At that time, the court observed that there had been “casualness” and “negligence” on the part of the CBI in seeking permission from the central government for filing the appeal after the expiry of a mandatory 90-day period for filing an appeal in certain categories of criminal cases.
The appeal will be heard on September 13.
ENSAAF’s report Twenty Years of Impunity: The November 1984 Pogroms of Sikhs in India discusses how grave lapses in police investigations, delays in filing cases, the failure to identify and investigate prosecution witnesses, the deliberate misrecording of witness statements, and the failure to comply with legal procedures precluded effective prosecutions. It also specifically focuses on the acquittal of this case against Sajjan Kumar:
On December 23, 2002, another major perpetrator, MP Sajjan Kumar, was acquitted in the last case remaining against him. This case illustrates the government delays and impact of police manipulation of evidence. The police had earlier closed all cases against Kumar, never filing a charge sheet. Only after the Poti-Rosha committee recommended the institution of a case against Kumar, based on the affidavit of Anwar Kaur regarding the murder of her husband, did the CBI register a case on September 7, 1989. In 1992, the CBI applied for prosecution sanction—required by the State for the arrest or prosecution of public servants653—but received no response for two years from the government of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao (who was Home Minister in November 1984). After M.L. Khurana began to push for the grant of sanction, the CBI was finally able to file its charge sheet in court in December 1994 and record the statements of witnesses in 1999, 15 years after the massacre. Two witnesses testified to seeing Kumar addressing meetings on October 31, exhorting people to kill Sikhs. Anwar Kaur gave her testimony and stood by her statement for two days of cross-examination. On the third day, the reporter recorded a confusing statement where Anwar Kaur first vehemently stood by her testimony of the previous days, and then stated the contrary. Harvinder S. Phoolka, senior advocate representing the victims, attributed this to a recording error—the insertion of one negative word.
The next five witnesses called by the prosecution turned hostile. Kumar’s two witnesses, both police officers, had recorded the Sultanpuri omnibus FIR. The Sessions Judge Manju Goel acquitted Sajjan Kumar on the basis of the police officers’ testimony that none of the witnesses had mentioned Kumar in their FIRs or testimonies, failing to account for police manipulation of FIRs and testimonies…Thus, by tampering with and falsifying the FIRs, and failing to record the names of certain perpetrators, the police managed to preclude most of the prosecutions.
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