A 29-year-old anti-Sikh riots case came back to haunt senior Congress leader Jagdish Tytler with a Delhi court today setting aside CBI's closure report giving clean chit to him and ordering reopening of investigation into the killing of three persons.
The order on one of the 1984 anti-sikh riots case also came as an embarrassment for the CBI which was opposing the plea for further investigation as the court found fault with the probe by the agency which did not examine the available witnesses.
"The order of trial court accepting the closure report dated April 27, 2010 is set aside.
"CBI is directed to conduct further investigation in the light of aforesaid facts and to record the statements of witnesses, who it had come to know during the investigation itself, are claiming/shown/named to be the eye witnesses of the incident," Additional Sessions Judge Anuradha Shukla Bhardwaj said.
Today's order came as a big jolt to Tytler, who had got a clean chit twice from the CBI which had closed the case.
The court said that CBI had an "obligation" to record the statement of US-based three persons, whose names were taken by an eye witness that they were also present with at the spot.
"The moment this statement of the witness was recorded irrespective of whether he was telling truth or lie, the investigating agency had an obligation to have recorded the statements of these persons or atleast to have made enquiry from them.
"We understand that the CBI reserves its right to conclude that these witnesses were planted and not truthworthy and thus to file a closure report giving its opinion on the issue, however, it did not have any right to have not recorded the statements of these witnesses and thus to have prevented the court from forming its own opinion regarding reliability of these witnesses," it said.
Facing flak for its probe, CBI said it will study the verdict before deciding the course of action.
Agency sources, meanwhile, maintained that they had sent a team to record the statement of the witness based in the US but his statements were not found to have any evidential value.
The court's order came on a plea by the riot victims against the CBI giving a clean chit to Tytler and filing a closure report.
