SIT set up for re-investigation into 1984 anti-Sikh riots

More than 30 years after the anti-Sikh riots, a Special Investigation Team was set up by the government on Thursday for conducting a fresh probe into all cases relating to the pogrom in Delhi and some other states.

Senior IPS officer Pramode Asthana will head the three-member SIT which will also have Rakesh Kapur, a retired district and Sessions Judge, and Kumar Gyanesh, Additional DCP with the Delhi Police. The SIT will submit its report within 6 months.

An order on setting up of the SIT was issued by the Home Ministry this evening, official sources said.

As mandated under its terms of reference, the SIT will re-investigate all serious criminal cases of anti-Sikh riots of 1984, examine records of all police stations where the riots had taken place and also examine the findings of the Justice S D Jain and Justice D K Agarwal Committee.

The SIT will also take appropriate steps under law for a thorough investigation of cases and file a charge sheet in appropriate courts with sufficient available evidence.

Asthana will look after day-to-day functioning of the SIT while retired judge Kapour will look after cases which went to court and chargesheeted but did not make any headway. The Additional DCP will probe FIRs which did not make any headway in probe.

The SIT has been constituted following a recommendation of a committee, headed by former Supreme Court Judge Justice (retd) G P Mathur, which was set up to look into the possibility of re-investigation of the 1984 riots.

The committee submitted its report to Home Minister Rajnath Singh last month recommending setting up of an SIT for a fresh probe into the riots that followed assassination of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984.

3,325 people were killed in the riots. Of them, Delhi alone accounted for 2,733 and the rest deaths were in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and other states.

BJP had earlier demanded re-investigation into all anti-Sikh riot cases.