NEW DELHI: Thirty-four years after the anti-Sikh riots, the Delhi High Court on Wednesday upheld the conviction of 70 of the 89 people who were awarded five-year jail terms by a trial court for rioting, burning houses and violation of curfew.
Of the remaining 19 people, 16 died during the pendency of their appeals against the trial court’s August 27, 1996 decision. The appeals of the three others were dismissed after they absconded.
Dismissing the 22-year-old appeals, Justice R K Gauba asked the convicts to surrender forthwith to serve their remaining prison terms for rioting, looting and burning houses in Trilokpuri between October 31 and November 3 in 1984.
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“That the criminal justice administration may falter or crumble or lose its potency is no longer a distant doomsday scenario. It appears to have arrived and stares at us in the face,” the judge said.
Noting that the 1984 riots were a “dark chapter” in the history of independent India, the bench said: “The police forces and the civil administration did not take timely or effective action to prevent the riotous conditions from spiralling out of hand. The criminal law process began, but hesitatingly and belatedly.”
The HC said in view of the extensive damage that was caused by the appellants to a large number of houses or other properties of the Sikh community, the case merited punishment more severe than the one meted out by the trial court.
After a day-long hunger strike, the newly elected Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) on Wednesday alleged that the varsity was being “imploded from within by the administration”, which was claiming expenses that differ from the financial reports available.
The association alleged that the average academic expenditure as a proportion of total expenditure was down by nearly 2 per cent, from 8.5 per cent (2012-13 to 2015-16) to 6.65 per cent (last two years).
It said that the JNU library had received an annual allocation of just `1.7 crore, and most journals subscriptions will have to be discontinued as a result. “With e-journals and databases provided by the UGC to JNU and other universities being discontinued from December 2018, this means that the JNU library will be virtually shut down, and this is because of the decisions of the administration alone,” the association alleged in a statement.
Last week, the varsity had said that there was “no provision” for a means-cum-merit (MCM) fund in the annual grants received by it, after students alleged that such scholarships were not being disbursed by the administration. Citing the financial report, the JNUTA alleged: “A 15 per cent increase in receipts from academic fees in the last two years has been observed. Despite a `10.99 crore income from academic fees alone, MCM fellowships are not being disbursed.”
Security expenses, however, have gone up, it said. “The increase in the absolute amount spent extra on security is `6,33,99,965 on an average in the last two years, which is 6.7 times more than the amount reduced for library books and e-journals,” it added.
The JNUTA alleged that a major expense the university will record will be that for the JNU entrance exam, whose expenditure “mysteriously went up from `3.75 crore in 2016-17 to `6.04 crore in 2017-18.”
“It is this unacademic thinking on the part of JNU administration and the diversion of funds from teaching and research to other purposes that is really the crisis and the story of JNU. Teaching and learning in JNU are at stake, along with access to education. On behalf of the JNUTA, we are committed to fighting this till the last and not let the JNU administration destroy a prestigious university created through a Parliament Act,” JUTA president Atul Sood said.