Sirsa moves HC for disclosure of ’84 riots report on Nath’s alleged presence

The Delhi High Court has fixed November 18 for hearing a fresh application filed by Delhi minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa, seeking directions to summon an internal police report that allegedly mentions the presence of former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath at a crime scene during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

The application, moved before Justice Ravinder Dudeja, seeks the disclosure of a report submitted by then Additional Commissioner of Police Gautam Kaul to the Commissioner of Police. The report pertains to the events of November 1, 1984, the day two Sikh men, Inderjeet Singh and Manmohan Singh, were burnt alive in the compound of Gurdwara Rakab Ganj.

The petition asserts that the said report contains crucial references to Nath’s presence at the gurdwara, yet the Centre’s earlier affidavit, filed in response to a court direction issued on January 27, 2022, failed to make any mention of it.

Appearing for the petitioner, senior advocate HS Phoolka told the court that multiple police records and contemporary newspaper reports had documented Nath’s presence at the scene, but those elements were ignored in the government’s status report. “Despite judicial direction, the material concerning Nath’s role was withheld,” he argued.

The FIR in the case named five accused, but Nath was never formally named in the investigation. All five accused were eventually acquitted by the trial court, which concluded they were not present at the site during the killings.

Sirsa’s plea revives a decades-old controversy that has repeatedly surfaced in legal and political fora over the years. He has maintained that Nath was allegedly leading the mob that attacked the gurdwara, a claim Nath has consistently denied.

The application now seeks judicial intervention to bring the purported police report into the court’s record to ascertain whether Nath’s name was indeed mentioned and, if so, why it was ignored in previous investigations.

Delhi