“The anti-Sikh riots of 1984 was a horror story for the country, in which the Delhi Police played the most shameful role,” says Ved Prakash Marwah, the former Commissioner of Delhi Police, who was instrumental in conducting the first inquiry into the riots.
Mr. Marwah was assigned the job of enquiring into the role of the police during the November 1984 carnage. A committee under the name of Marwah Commission was constituted to look into the matter.
While Mr. Marwah was still conducting the inquiry, many police officers approached the Delhi High Court opposing it.
“Delhi Police had played a shameful role during the riots. During my inquiry, I went to the police stations in East and South Delhi and found that the police did not even go to the spot at the time of the clashes. There were records which proved the same. I took those records with me and wrote my report according to that,” he said.
However, as Mr. Marwah completed his inquiry towards the middle of 1985, he was directed by the Home Ministry not to proceed further. Complete records of the Marwah Commission were taken over by the government and later transferred to the Misra Commission.
“I was almost done with my inquiry when I was abruptly asked to stop. I was about to approach senior police officers and the Lieutenant-Governor when I was asked to stop the inquiry,” recalls Mr. Marwah.
“The criminal justice system is in a bad state in our country. Ideally, there should have been legal action against the police officers found guilty of not performing their duty, but it was the other way round. A man who was trying to do his job was stopped mid-way and defamation cases were filed against him,” he said.
“The then Additional Deputy Commissioner of South Chandra Prakash filed a defamation case against me for naming him in my report. My report was not even complete and there is no official record that I named him. He just filed a case on the basis of a newspaper report,” Mr. Marwah added.
“The officers who were guilty got promotions and led a comfortable life, while I had to face defamation cases for a long time”, he added.
