In the wake of the Misra Commission, six committees were appointed, three of which were recommended by Judge Misra. Unlike a wide-ranging commission that was government-appointed and bound to report to parliament, these committees were established by the government of the day to each investigate a single, well-defined issue and instruct the police to file criminal proceedings against the accused.
The three committees established on Misra’s recommendation began their work on 23 February 1987 with remits to investigate specific aspects of the massacres. Notably, each would go on to contradict the findings of the Misra Commission, especially with regards to Congress complicity.1
Jain-Bannerjee Committee
The first to report was the Jain-Bannerjee Committee, headed by Justice Jain, a former judge of the Delhi High Court, and Mr Bannerjee, a retired police officer. They were tasked with examining whether a large number of cases, particularly those that named political leaders or police officers, had been properly registered and investigated.
In August 1987, the committee recommended that a number of cases should be registered against former Congress minister Sajjan Kumar for allegedly leading a mob that killed Navin Singh in Sultanpuri. However, in December 1987, one of his co-accused, Brahmanand Gupta, filed a petition in the Delhi High Court and obtained a stay against the Committee’s recommendations, which the government did not oppose. Although the CJC filed an application opposing the stay, the High Court upheld Gupta’s petition in October 1989. The presiding judge in the case, Yogeshwar Dayal, had in 1984 dismissed the original petition requesting the setting up of an independent inquiry into the massacres. This legal intervention meant that not only had key Congress party leaders been insulated from prosecution, but it effectively led to the abolishing of the Jain-Bannerjee Committee. None of its recommendations were implemented.2
Ahuja Committee 3
The Ahuja Committee was headed by Mr R. K. Ahuja, a secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, to determine the total number of killings in Delhi only. In its report submitted in August 1987, it found that the total number of deaths in the capital came to 2,733. This figure was in stark contrast to Home Minister Rao’s figure of 800 a month after the violence and somewhat higher than the Misra Commission’s 2,307. All fell well below the CJC’s estimate of 3,949.
Kapoor- Mittal Committee 4
The third committee recommended by Misra was the Kapoor- Mittal Committee headed by Justice K. Kapoor and Ms Kusum Lata Mittal, the retired secretary of the state of Uttar Pradesh. Its task was to investigate the role of the police. The Marwah Commission had previously been established to inquire into police misconduct but had been forced to abort its investigation by the government in 1985. Most of its findings (excluding Marwah’s written notes) were later made available to the Misra Commission. Following on from Marwah’s work, the Committee submitted its final report in February 1990. It identified seventy-two police officers either for their connivance or gross negligence and recommended that thirty of them be immediately dismissed.5 The accused moved the High Court in the hope of quashing the Kapoor-Mittal panel. This went to the Supreme Court, which issued a stay on the proceedings. Consequently, no action was taken against the thirty police officers.
Further enquiries ensued. In March 1990 the new prime minister, V. P. Singh of the Janata Dal Party, appointed a successor to the Jain-Bannerjee Committee.
Poti-Rosha Committee
This fourth entity, the Poti-Rosha Committee, was headed by Justice P. Subramanian Poti, a former chief justice of the Kerala and Gujarat High Courts, and Mr P. A. Rosha, a retired officer of the Indian Police Service. It was to examine and investigate the registration of cases, making recommendations based on affidavits. As before, they recommended that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) register a case against Sajjan Kumar, this time for allegedly leading a mob that killed Anwar Kaur’s husband. When a CBI team went to Kumar’s home to file charges they were threatened and locked up by a mob of his supporters. The team made frantic calls of help but the Delhi police failed to intervene. Soon after, the perceived threat led Poti and Rosha to decline a renewal of their tenure.
Jain-Aggarwal Committee 6
In December 1990 the Jain-Aggarwal Committee was appointed as a successor to the Poti-Rosha Committee. Justice Jain returned to join Mr Aggarwal, a retired director general of police in Uttar Pradesh. Over the next three years, they recommended forty-eight cases to be registered, including against Congress politicians H.K. L. Bhagat, Sajjan Kumar, Dharam Dass Shastri and Jagdish Tytler. The CBI, which was still reeling from the Sajjan Kumar arrest fiasco, failed to register any of them.7
The Delhi Administration ostensibly accepted all of the recommendations made by the Jain-Aggarwal Committee, which required all the affidavits filed by victims to be transcribed verbatim into First Information Reports (FIRs).
Criminal Bureau of Investigation (CBI)
Sajjan Kumar’s was the very first case to be registered in September 1990 based on the affidavit of Anwar Kaur.8 The CBI completed its inquiry and drafted the charge sheet in March 1992. The Home Minister even declared in parliament that the charge sheet against Kumar was ready. The CBI had only to file it in court so that the trial could begin but it departed from standard procedure and instead referred the case to the Home Ministry for approval. By this time, however, a new Congress government was in power with Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, who had been the home minister in 1984, at the helm. The central government sat on the case for two years before it was decided in 1994 that it did not fall under its jurisdiction. The case was transferred to the Delhi Administration.
Similarly dark machinations would also reveal themselves in Bhagat’s case, which the Jain-Aggarwal Committee had recommended be registered based on Harminder Kaur’s affidavit. The Delhi Administration, headed by Lieutenant Governor Markandey Singh, accepted the recommendation and referred the matter to the CBI. However, Bhagat intervened to get the case thrown out, citing in letters to the administration his exoneration as per the Misra report.
As the case began to stall, the Jain-Aggarwal Committee opposed Bhagat’s intervention by declaring that Harminder Kaur’s affidavit had not been seen by Judge Misra. The CBI then stepped in, refused to deal with the affidavit and returned it, along with twenty other politically sensitive affidavits, stating that the Delhi police’s special riot cell – one of the branches of police that had been implicated in the violence of 1984 – was now dealing with them.
Remarkably, even the head of this unit, Akhtar Ali Farooquee, admitted that they were not best placed to be involved in the investigation, questioning whether they could be considered an independent agency to investigate cases where they themselves were the accused party.
The resulting conflict of interest undoubtedly influenced the decision to proceed with only eight cases – these were regarded as the weakest, being most based on hearsay. Not one of them mentioned any direct evidence against the accused Congress leaders. Astonishingly, the solid testimonies, which named Bhagat and Kumar, were discarded outright.
In September 1993, India Today journalist, Manoj Mitta, exposed the delays that had thus far taken place: ‘A closer scrutiny shows an elaborate cover-up operation’. It was clear to him that there were ‘calculated moves made by three wings of the government – the Home Ministry, the Delhi Administration and the CBI – to shield Bhagat and Kumar’.9
The sixth attempt to secure some form of justice came in December 1993 in the form of the Narula Committee. It was initiated by the chief minister of Delhi, Madan Lal Khurana of the BJP. Once again, recommendations were made to register cases against Bhagat and Kumar, and once again the cases were passed on to Rao’s government, which delayed them for two years before deciding that the issue actually fell under the remit of the Delhi Administration.
The CBI finally filed the charge sheet against Kumar in December 1994. But it took them a further five years – a total of fifteen years after the massacres had occurred – to record the statements of witnesses. Two of the witnesses testified seeing Kumar addressing a meeting where he incited people to kill Sikhs but their testimony was recorded incorrectly in court. The session judge, Manju Goel, gave priority to Kumar’s own witnesses who were two police officers, despite accusations that the police had falsified FIRs. In December 2002, the first case against Kumar was dismissed.
It was only when the Congress Party were voted out of power in 1996 that the police finally registered the case against Bhagat. The case against him was based on the affidavits of Darshan Kaur, a survivor of the Trilokpuri atrocities, and Harminder Kaur, whose son, son-in-law and husband, a Delhi police head constable, were killed by a mob allegedly instigated by Bhagat.
Bhagat was finally arrested on 25 January 1996. In a show of legal force, he entered court accompanied by a hundred lawyers. The defence was led by R. K. Anand, Chairman of the Delhi Bar Council, who would later become a Congress MP. As one of the witnesses had turned hostile to the prosecution’s case and others were dropped, it was left to Darshan Kaur to testify despite threats to her life. In the end, the case against Bhagat collapsed as a conviction could not be secured on the testimony of one sole witness. The judge rejected the prosecution’s request to call further witnesses.10
Twenty years after the crimes has been committed, a petition to include further witnesses in Bhagat’s case was finally approved. But by then, May 2004, the senior Congress politician’s lawyers were arguing that, as he was suffering with dementia, no warrants could be issued.
The Committees and CBI investigations (1987-1996) into the 1984 Sikh Genocide.
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- Jain Aggarwal Committee Report 1993. ↩︎
- Manoj Mitta and Harvinder Phoolka, When a Tree Shook Delhi, 2007, p 149. ↩︎
- Ahooja Committee Report 1988. ↩︎
- Kapoor Mittal Committee Report 1990. ↩︎
- Kusum Lata Mittal Committee Report 1990. ↩︎
- Jain Aggarwal Committee Report 1993. ↩︎
- Manoj Mitta and Harvinder Phoolka, When a Tree Shook Delhi, 2007, p 163. ↩︎
- Jaskaran Kaur, Twenty Years of Impunity, 2006, p 99. ↩︎
- Manoj Mitta, ‘Government ducks action against H.K.L. Bhagat and Sajjan Kumar despite mounting evidence’, India Today, 15 September 1993. ↩︎
- Manoj Mitta and Harvinder Phoolka, When a Tree Shook Delhi, 2007, p 1486. ↩︎