1. 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 question as to whether the guilt of the appellants for complicity in rioting and mischief by fire was correctly concluded or not has come up for determination thirty-four years after the crimes were committed and twenty-two years after the trial court had rendered its decision. The whole exercise is reduced to the level of academic.

2. On 31.10.1984, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, was assassinated by her bodyguards. Riots broke out on the same day in the capital city of Delhi and other parts of the country which, in no time, turned communal, they being directed against the Sikh community. Carnage followed for several days in which thousands suffered physical harm or damage to the property. A large number perished. Semblance of law and order returned, albeit after several days, in the wake of the armed forces being called in aid of the civil administration.

3. The failure of the police, and the civil authorities, in controlling the situation, or meeting the challenge, by enforcing the law has been chronicled not only in the media reports but also found to be a fact in decisions of the courts of law, in various cases brought at almost each level of the judicial hierarchy, as indeed recorded in the reports of numerous Commissions of inquiry or Committees that were set up in the decades that have followed. The circumstances that prevailed during riots are the harsh reality of which judicial notice may be taken.

4. The anti-Sikh riots of 1984 are indeed a dark chapter in the history of independent India which, it is often said, this country must put behind so as to move ahead. But, for those who suffered personal loss in the form of killings of their near and dear ones, or destruction of their homes, there possibly can never be a closure. The theories of politico - criminal nexus, aided and assisted by police or civil service officials loyal to the cause, being behind the mayhem that was wrecked, virtually with impunity or immunity, continue to abound and haunt. There is also a contrarian view that such dark chapters in the history of the land must never get effaced from memory since they confront us, the civil society at large, by showing a mirror, to expose to us the rot that lies within.

5. The communal riots of the likes of 1984 have been erupting time and again, as a scourge, in free India, starting with the partition riots of 1947, more often than not, fanned by socio-political leadership. Many such communal riots have preceded, or followed, those of 1984, each leaving behind numerous cases of mass murders, arson, loot, plunder, et al. In the present context, the court is not concerned with what were the causes for failure of administration or of law and order or, to go further, what reforms are required to ensure that such break-down of administrative machinery, or rule of law, does not recur. The court is concerned more with the enforcement of criminal law in the wake of such serious crimes as were committed in the name of protests taking the ugly shape of communal riots.

6. These twenty-three criminal appeals arise out of the decision of a court of Sessions in a case (sessions case 34/95) relating to rioting accompanied by commission of serious offences in the afternoon of 02.11.1984 in Block no.32 of a locality known as Trilok Puri, within the territorial jurisdiction of police station Kalyan Puri, Delhi, it being subject matter of investigation through first information report (FIR) no.426/1984 of the said police station. This case is one of the several cases that were registered around that period, the grievances of the victim community, and the civil society at large, consistently being that there was utter failure on the part of the police in not only controlling the situation but also in bringing the p