There is no separate FIR for each death, and in such cases, the judges added, the accused enjoy political patronage and thus evade prosecution and punishment
The Delhi High Court linked the 1984 anti-Sikh riots with similar mass killings in the country, such as Mumbai (1993), Gujarat (2002), Kandhamal (2008) and Muzaffarnagar (2013), and demanded a separate law to deal with such instances of "genocide" or "crimes against humanity".
Noting the extraordinary facts of the anti-Sikh riots, where 2,733 Sikhs were massacred in Delhi and 3,350 across India, a bench of justices S Muralidhar and Vinod Goel said, "The mass killings of Sikhs between November 1 and 4, 1984, in Delhi and the rest of the country, engineered by political actors with the assistance of the law enforcement agencies, answer the description of crimes against humanity."
Such crimes are "extraordinary" by their sheer numbers, the bench noted, adding, the lack of any offence to punish genocide or crimes against humanity poses the biggest "loophole" in our legal system that needs to be set right. Under the present law, mass killing of persons from one community amounts to murder punishable under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
There is no separate FIR for each death, and in such cases, the judges added, the accused enjoy political patronage and thus evade prosecution and punishment.
In the case of the anti-Sikh riots, justice evaded victims for 34 years, the court noted, saying that in one particular instance, as many as 341 deaths in Delhi Cantonment occurred within a span of four days. But only 21 FIRs were registered, of which only 15 pertained to murder. Shockingly, the police recovered only five bodies, that too after the intervention of the Army.
And this was not an isolated case. "There has been a familiar pattern of mass killings in Mumbai in 1993, in Gujarat in 2002, in Kandhamal, Odisha in 2008, in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh in 2013 to name a few. Common to these mass crimes were the targeting of minorities and attacks spearheaded by the dominant political actors being facilitated by the law enforcement agencies," the court observed.
In these instances of mass crimes, the bench noted, "The criminals responsible for mass crimes have enjoyed political patronage and managed to evade prosecution and punishment. Bringing such criminals to justice poses a serious challenge to our legal system. Neither crime against humanity nor genocide is part of our domestic law of crime. This loophole needs to be addressed urgently."
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