Anwar Kaur

Anwar Kaur is a Sikh woman of Sultanpuri in West Delhi whose husband, Navin Singh, was killed by a mob on 1 November 1984, the day after Indira Gandhi's assassination. Her affidavit led a government committee in 1987 to ask the police to register a case against the Congress leader Sajjan Kumar. She alleged that a mob instigated by Sajjan Kumar killed her husband (The Tribune, 24 December 2002); ThePrint says the crowd lynched him.

The affidavit: A government committee under Justice M.L. Jain and A.K. Banerji, set up in February 1987 on the Misra Commission's recommendation, invited affidavits from the victims by public notice and received 415. The Jain-Aggarwal Committee's later report records that on one of them, filed by Smt. Anwar Kaur, "a victim of October-November, 1984 riots", the committee wrote on 14 October 1987 to the Additional Commissioner of Police. It said the affidavit disclosed cognizable offences against Sajjan Kumar, Nathu Pardhan, Brahma Nand Gupta and others, and asked that cases be registered at Sultanpuri police station and investigated at once. The police replied that the letter should go through the Delhi Administration. Brahma Nand Gupta and others then went to the Delhi High Court, which on 24 November 1987 stopped the committee from recommending fresh cases; the injunction lasted until the High Court's judgment of 4 October 1989. Carnage 84's note on the report says the court upheld Gupta's petition and quashed the committee's notification.

The CBI case: The Tribune reported that the Central Bureau of Investigation registered a case in 1990, with Sajjan Kumar as the main accused, on the complaint of a woman whose husband had been killed by a mob. The CBI charge sheet named 13 persons for rioting and related offences, and it examined 27 witnesses. On 23 December 2002 Additional Sessions Judge Manju Goel acquitted Sajjan Kumar and the other accused, saying that only three witnesses had been examined, that there were flaws in their testimony and that the prosecution had failed to link the accused to the killings. The Tribune reported that the order drew a sharp reaction from the Sikh community, who blamed the police and the former Congress government for "allowing evidence to weaken". In July 2003 the CBI challenged the acquittal in the Delhi High Court, arguing that there was sufficient evidence to prove him guilty.

Key moments

• 1 November 1984: Navin Singh is killed in Sultanpuri.
• 14 October 1987: the Jain-Banerjee committee writes to the police on the strength of her affidavit.
• 1990: the CBI registers its case against Sajjan Kumar and others.
• 23 December 2002: the trial court acquits all the accused.
• July 2003: the CBI challenges the acquittal in the Delhi High Court.

Remembered for: Anwar Kaur's affidavit is the one on which the first of the government's committees asked for a case against Sajjan Kumar. The Nanavati Commission lists her among the Sultanpuri residents who described attacks on their own houses and the killing of near relatives, and it recommended that other Sultanpuri cases against Sajjan Kumar, closed as untraced, be re-examined. Her own case ended in acquittal in 2002, and the record shows the delay and the court's reasons side by side.