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Updated: Dec 19, 2018 23:45 IST

In a case related to mob violence during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in New Delhi, this one in central Delhi’s Paharganj area, the special investigation team (SIT) set up to look into such cases managed to trace a witness, currently settled in New York.

The 55-year-old was testifying in the murder of her maternal grandfather, who was beaten and thrown off the balcony of their house. Through a keyhole of the bathroom’s door, she saw a local named Prakash killing her grandfather.

“The investigation team arranged a video conference with her. The team found five men named Prakash who lived in the locality. When the team showed her the photographs of the five men, she was unable to recollect the man’s face after all these years. All she remembered was that the suspect had prominent chicken pox scars on his face. There was no way to identify the Prakash of that case. The team closed the case,” said a government official familiar with the SIT’s efforts.

It isn’t easy to investigate old crimes, especially those that are at least three decades old — that is the experience of a three-member SIT that was set up by the National Democratic Alliance government to reopen cases from the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 in the aftermath of the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, which resulted in the deaths of 2,733 Sikhs.

The team of two police officers and a retired judge were in February 2015 tasked to probe the riots and the murders that happened on Delhi streets for 48 hours after the assassination.

Also read | A cop asked, kitne murge bhun diye’: 1984 riots witness recalls horror

Last month, the SIT managed to secure a conviction in one of the 60 cases it has reinvestigated since being constituted (it examined 293 but said only 60 could be reopened). There were 52 other cases that were reinvestigated but reached a dead end.

This statistic is important, especially in the wake of the most high-profile conviction in the riots cases — that of Congress leader Sajjan Kumar, who was sentenced to life by Delhi high court earlier this week. Kumar’s conviction came not on account of a reinvestigation by SIT but on an appeal against a 2013 lower court order by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The 52 cases reached a dead end simply because a lot has happened in the past three decades: records went missing, important eyewitnesses did not remember a thing, and many refused to speak to the police team, perhaps out of fear, but in many cases, also because they didn’t want to reopen old wounds. In two cases, all the 13 accused had died of natural causes.

The court accepted the team’s plea of being unable to proceed in the investigation despite its best efforts. Hindustan Times reviewed old records to understand why the 52 cases reached a dead end.

In another case, in mid-2017, the team knocked at the doors of a house in Bhatinda, Punjab. The widowed woman and her daughter who lived there had left Delhi after the riots. The young woman, who lost her father in the riots, opened the door but refused to talk to the police team. Records show that in at least nine cases, the relatives of the riot victims refused to talk to the police. In another case, the complainant whose brother-in-law was murdered, became mentally disturbed and went missing two decades ago.

The three-member team is the first that has been formed to probe the riots. Last month, in one of the cases it reinvestigated, the court awarded death sentence to a west Delhi resident while convicting another to life imprisonment.

“Our efforts paid off but 34 years is a long time. A lot has changed. There were no mobile phones so there could not be any audio or video evidence of the cases. In 1984, the BJP had less than five MPs while the Congress was in power. Today, the BJP is everywhere with the highest numbers in Parliament while the Congress has been reduced to less than 60 seats. Or is it less than 50?” said a police officer who was once part of the SIT.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court signed off on the creation of a two-man SIT to look into the 186 cases closed by the 2015 SIT without further probe.

Read | Hope for the 1984 survivors, finally