A Delhi court on Thursday transferred the two 1984 anti-Sikh riots cases, allegedly involving Congress leader Sajjan Kumar and others, from Special CBI judge to a sessions court.
"Indisputably, Delhi is one sessions division and any Additional Sessions Judge can try the case. This is not a case under the Prevention of Corruption Act. The chargesheets were assigned to Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of the North East district who conducted the committal proceedings, so the cases are allocated to Additional Sessions Judge (NE) Sunita Gupta," District and Sessions Judge G P Mittal said.
The court directed all the accused as well as the CBI counsel to appear before ASJ Gupta on April 5. Earlier, the court reserved its order on a plea of a co-accused of Kumar seeking transfer of riots cases from a special court to a judge having local jurisdiction.
The court heard the arguments of counsel for CBI and Khushal Singh, the co-accused of Kumar, in the matter. During arguments in the matter, V K Malik, counsel for Khushal, submitted that it was illegal to try an offence before a court which does not have jurisdiction in the matter.
He contended that Delhi has been divided into nine judicial districts and so the cases relating to killings of the victims during the riots should be tried at the courts having proper jurisdiction.
Malik submitted that since the cases in which CBI filed the chargesheet related to the offence that took place in Sultanpuri and Delhi Cantonment area, they should be tried at Rohini and Dwarka courts respectively.
However, D P Singh, counsel for CBI, said that the application of the accused has already been disposed of by a special CBI judge at Karkardooma.
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