A city court on Thursday sentenced to life three of the five convicts in a 1984 anti-Sikh riot case. District and Sessions Judge JR Aryan pronounced the sentence to Balwan Khokkar, Girdhari lal and Captain Bhagmal, who were held guilty of murdering five Sikhs during the riots that had broken out after the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Two other convicts — an ex-councillor Mahender Yadav and ex-MlA Kishan Khokkar, were awarded three-year imprisonment. Both Yadav and Khokkar were, however, granted bail by the court. The judge also imposed a fine of `1,000 each on all the five convicts.
The case pertains to killing of five Sikhs — Kehar Singh, Gurpreet Singh, Raghuvender Singh, Narender Pal Singh and Kuldeep Singh — by the mob in Raj Nagar area of Delhi Cantonment. The victims were members of the same family. Congress leader Sajjan Kumar was acquitted in the case on April 30 due to “benefit of doubt” since one of the victims and key witness Jagdish Kaur did not name him as an accused in her statement recorded by the Justice Ranganath Mishra panel in 1985.
Earlier, pressing for capital punishment for all the five convicts, CBI counsel RS Cheema argued, “It was a planned communal riot and the motive behind it was religious cleansing. A particular community was attacked and males were targeted. Widows and children were left behind with no source of income.”
However, rejecting the contention of the CBI for death sentence to Balwan, lal and Bhagmal, the court said their offence does not come under the category of rarest of rare. “They had no special or personal animosity towards anyone or the deceased individually. The assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had blindfolded those youths and unfortunately there was no leadership to rein in the mob,” it said.
Soon after the judgement, victims broke into tears and demanded deaths for the five convicts.