Name persons who demonstrated in Mirchpur killings case: SC

Name persons who demonstrated in Mirchpur killings case: SC

The Supreme Court has asked the Haryana govt to identify the persons and organisation responsible for holding demonstration in Dec last against booking of some upper caste people in connection with the Mirchpur dalit killings case.

A bench of justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly on Monday also directed the government and the Railway Board to spell out steps taken by them to recover financial loss caused following the 11-day stir organised by 12 'khap' panchayats.

"Who are the persons behind it? You must tell us the names of the persons and the party who were behind all these agitations. There must have been some kind of political backing behind it," the bench said while granting two weeks' time to reply.

Not impressed by the response of the state government that cases have been filed, the court said, "Forget about cases. We know what happens after case is registered. State must tell us who is responsible for this (agitation)."

Villagers had been protesting the booking of 98 members of their community in the case relating to the killing of 70-year-old Tara Chand and his physically challenged teenaged daughter Suman at Mirchpur village in Hisar on 21^st April last year.

Demanding a fresh probe into the dalit killings, upper caste people of Mirchpur and other adjoining villages in Hisar district had brought the rail and road traffic to Delhi via Jind to a grinding halt earlier this month.

On the last hearing the state government had informed the court that loss of Rs 45.92 lakh was caused to the transport department due to agitation and Rs 90,000 were spent by the forest department in removing 3130 trees which were uprooted by the protesters.

Members of the pre-dominant Jat community squatted on the railway tracks at Julani village near Jind railway station in December last year, disrupting railway traffic on the Jind-Jakhal section of the Delhi-Ferozepur route.

The protesters had also been blocking road traffic in Jind and other places of the state, besides locking up the Haryana roadways bus depot in many places.

Normalcy was restored in the troubled districts on 26^th January following talks between leaders of the protesters and Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda in Kaithal.

Hooda had assured Bhag Singh Jalabh, convener of the 41-member committee constituted by Sarvjatiya Sarvkhap Mahapanchayat, to look into his grievances that many of the upper caste people had been falsely implicated in the case.

A Delhi court had on 9^th January directed the Haryana government to move all the 98 accused from Hisar jail to Tihar prison since their trial was transferred to a court in Delhi following a Supreme Court order.

The protesters had been demanding that the probe be held by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) either at Rohtak or Hisar and the accused be lodged in either of the two jails.