HC confirms death sentence for accused in 1984 riots

The Delhi high court on Friday confirmed the death sentence on Kishore, an accused in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in the capital.

A division bench consisting of Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justice A K Srivastava, however, acquitted two others, Dhuli Chand and Mohammed Abbas, who were sentenced to life imprisonment by a trial court in connection with the killing of Sikhs following the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984.

Dismissing the criminal appeal filed by Kishore, who was charged under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code for killing Raghbir Singh in Trilok Puri, the bench said the court has to keep in view the society's reasonable expectations for appropriate deterrent punishment.

''The crime here falls in the category of rare cases, and the sentence has to be deterrent so as to send a message to the future,'' the judges observed, adding that they had devoted considerable time to decide whether to confirm the death sentence awarded by the additional sessions judge or to convert it into lfe imprisonment. The offences took place more than 12 years ago and death sentences are not often awarded after so many years, the judges said. But it was not an inflexible rule and the delay in this case was mainly due to the apathy of the administration and police, they said.

It was only after the government constituted various commissions to investigate what happened during the riots and the role of the police that some cases came before the court, the bench observed.

''In this case the lapse of time is not a sufficient ground to convert death sentence into life imprisonment,'' the judges said and added that it was not an ordinary or routine case of murder, loot or burning.

The judges said one of the basic structures of the Constitution was secularism. In this case, members of a particular community were singled out and murdered, their properties looted and burnt. "Such lawlessness deserves to be sternly dealt with,'' the bench observed. "Having balanced on one hand the numbers of years that have gone by and on the other the trauma caused by it, we are of the firm view that any leniency, mercy and sympathy would be misplaced,'' the order said.