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| Life sentence for three in 1984 anti-Sikh riot case | | | NEW DELHI, MAR 29
Three persons were sentenced to life imprisonment by a court here today for lynching three members of a Sikh family during riots that followed the assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1984.
"Killing of innocent persons due to communal reasons is an indelible blot in the history of human civilisation," said Additional Sessions Judge Rajender Kumar Shastri, terming the carnage as "a virtual holocaust in independent India".
Shastri, however, rejected the prosecution's contention that the case falls in the "rarest of rare" category and warranted the death sentence for the convicts -- Harprasad Bharadwaj, R P Tiwari and Jagdish Giri.
The three were held guilty on Monday for killing three members of the family, including a head constable of Delhi Police.
Immediately after the sentence was pronounced, Tiwari shouted slogans glorifying the former prime minister, prompting security personnel to take him out of the courtroom.
Tiwari and Giri also said they were not given a fair trial and even asked they be given the death penalty.
"More excruciating were post hoc incidents (after the assassination of Gandhi) in which thousands of ingenuous citizens were butchered merely because they took birth in the community to which said bodyguards belonged," the judge said in his 22-page judgement, referring to the former prime minister's killing by her Sikh bodyguards.
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