Home Minister Amit Shah urged to inform SC about action taken on panel report With ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ traversing Punjab, the ruling BJP on Wednesday stepped up its offensive against the Congress, asking the Centre to file details of action taken on report of Justice SN Dhingra Committee, which flagged an “invisible hand” behind the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and revealed a “police-politician-judicial nexus” to bury the conspiracy.
In a letter to Home Minister Amit Shah today, BJP national secretary RP Singh, who is an intervener in the matter before the Supreme Court, said the Centre must inform the apex court by the next date of hearing what action it had taken on the Dhingra committee’s findings. The matter is listed for hearing on January 16. Speaking to The Tribune, Singh said, “The Justice SN Dhingra Committee’s report was submitted to the Supreme Court on April 15, 2019. We have urged the Centre to reveal what action it has taken against culprits mentioned in the report. We also want the Home Ministry to reveal the ‘invisible hand’ that fuelled the riots in 1984.”
The SIT constituted to act on the findings of the SC appointed Dhingra committee has submitted its report to the Home Ministry on actions taken. Singh cited principal findings of the Dhingra panel and said, “The report makes it abundantly clear that violence, riots as well as clearance to persons involved were orchestrated by an ‘invisible hand’ from the very top of the government in power at that time.” The Ministry of Home Affairs through Solicitor General Tushar Mehta had on January 15, 2020, informed the Supreme Court that it had accepted the report of the SIT which implicated several Delhi Police personnel and said it would take action accordingly. The Supreme Court had on January 11, 2018, constituted the committee in question.
The BJP national secretary cited the following Dhingra committee findings, “Lack of interest on behalf of the police was so extreme that instead of recording separate FIRs for 337 incidents reported by different victims for different incidents, an omnibus FIR was recorded.” He said the committee named “Additional Sessions Judge SS Bal for acquitting all accused persons in four trials and opines that the state should have preferred appeals against those judgments which it did not”. “The committee also mentions about SHO Survir Singh Tyagi as complicit with rioters. He was suspended from service only to be reinstated later and promoted as the ACP,” said Singh, attacking the Congress for involving Kamal Nath and Jagdish Tytler in the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, “despite their involvement in the riots”.