Uttar Pradesh: 36 years on, SIT probing anti-Sikh riots in Kanpur finds evidence of killings

KANPUR: More than 36 years after the anti-Sikh riots that singed the country following the assassination of the then PM Indira Gandhi, a special investigation team (SIT) formed by the UP government has found evidence of the murder of father-son duo in an unlocked part of a house of Kanpur.
The SIT has found human remains of the two victims killed by rioters from the house in Dabhauli area of the city.The team had visited the site on Tuesday.
According to SIT SSP, Balendu Bhushan Singh, on November 1, 1984, rioters had attacked house number 28 in L block of Dabhauli. After killing businessman Tej Pratap Singh and his son Satyaveer Singh, their bodies were set afire.
An FIR was registered in the Govind Nagar police station but the police closed the case after putting a final report in it.
Now, when the SIT started the investigation, one after the other evidence came to the fore. “The crime scene was not disturbed. The FSL team which accompanied us established that murders took place at the spot,” Bhushan said.
According to SIT sources, the new occupants to which the house was sold after the victims’ family moved to Delhi, reportedly kept to the first floor, keeping the rooms on the ground floor associated with the killings locked.
The SSP said that when the forensic team reached the spot on Tuesday, human blood stains were found there. Signs of arson were also found on the burnt doors and walls. The investigation team has collected this evidence. The SSP said that no documents related to this case were found. “Therefore it was not being investigated earlier,” he said.
The state government had set up SIT on February 5, 2019, to inquire into the circumstances leading to the riots in which at least 127 people were killed in Kanpur.
The team was set up after the apex court issued notice to the state government in August 2017 on a petition seeking SIT probe into the riots.
When Inspector Sunil Awasthi and Kamlesh Kumar went to Delhi in connection with the investigation of other cases, they met Satyaveer Singh’s son Charanjit Singh, now 61. He was an eyewitness in the incident and narrated the whole incident and provided the copy of the FIR lodged in the case.
Then this case was also included in the investigation, added SSP. The four-member SIT is headed by retired UP DGP Atul. The other members are retired district judge Subhash Chandra Agarwal and retired additional director (prosecution) Yogeshwar Krishna Srivastava. SP Balendu Bhushan Singh is its member-secretary.