Supreme Court on Wednesday questioned a decision of the Delhi High Court to re-open a case relating to 1984 anti-Sikh riots against former MLA Mahender Yadav, 31 years after he was acquitted by a city court.
“Under what procedure it has been done? On what basis this order has been passed?
Rightly or wrongly this man was acquitted in 1986 and none challenged the judgment for more than 30 years. All of a sudden in some other matter this order is passed. Under what process of law the high court can unsettle it,” a three-judge bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra asked.
Senior advocate HS Phoolka, representing riot victims, told the bench that eyewitnesses were not summoned; the trial was closed in three months and the high court had cited Zahira Sheikh’s case of the 2002 Gujarat riots case as a precedent.
But the bench didn’t appear to be convinced. “In that case (Zahira Sheikh’s case) someone had challenged the order. Here no one challenged it…Judges should not involved themselves in such cases,” Justice Misra said.
Yadav’s counsel Sultan Singh requested the bench to stay the high court’s order to ensure that no coercive action was taken against his client. “It’s a case of Section 302 (murder),” he submitted.
The bench, however, turned down the request, saying, “Nothing will happen. It’s only a show-cause notice.”
The Delhi High Court had in March 2017 sought to re-open the trial in five 1984 anti-Sikh riots cases in which all the accused were acquitted in 1986.
An HC bench of Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Anu Malhotra had issued show-cause notices to the accused, including Yadav, former councillor Balwan Khokkar and Ved Prakash, questioning why the case against them be not re-tried. Perhaps the matter was decided in a hurry, the HC, which had suo motu taken up these cases during hearing of another matter, had commented.
