Team News Riveting
New Delhi, August 30
A Delhi court on Friday ordered framing of charges, including that of murder, against Congress leader Jagdish Tytler in a case related to murder of three people in north Delhi’s Pul Bangash area during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
“Sufficient ground is there to proceed against the accused person,” Special CBI judge Rakesh Siyal said. The court posted the matter for September 13 for formally framing the charges when the accused would be asked if he would like to plead guilty or face trial. The offence entails a maximum punishment of death penalty in the rarest of rare cases.
The court ordered framing of charges against the accused for several offences, including unlawful assembly, rioting, promoting enmity between different groups, house trespass and theft.
In its charge sheet filed on May 20, the CBI said Tytler “incited, instigated and provoked” the mob that had assembled at Pul Bangash Gurdwara in Azad Market on November 1, 1984. It resulted in the burning down of the gurdwara and killing of three Sikhs — Thakur Singh, Badal Singh and Guru Charan Singh.
Another senior Delhi Congress leader and former MP Sajjan Kumar is already serving life imprisonment for the “remainder of his natural life” after being convicted by the Delhi High Court on December 17, 2018. The case in which Kumar was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment related to the killing of five Sikhs in Raj Nagar Part I area in Palam Colony in southwest Delhi on November 1-2, 1984, and the burning down of a gurdwara in Raj Nagar Part II. His appeal against conviction and sentence is pending in the Supreme Court which has refused to grant him bail on health grounds.
Around 3,000 people, mostly Sikhs, had died in the riots in the national capital in the aftermath of assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984. Three people were killed and a gurdwara was torched in the Pul Bangash area here on November 1, 1984.
Welcoming the development, BJP national spokesperson RP Singh wrote on X, “Albeit delayed, it appears justice is being done.”
