The Delhi High Court today directed the Home Ministry to submit all official documents relating to the President’s Gallantry Award given to senior IPS officer Amod Kanth and another, following allegations that they were instrumental in “implicating” 16 members of a Sikh family in a fake case during the 1984 riots in the Capital.

Dismissing a plea by the ministry for two months to collect the necessary files, Justice B D Ahamed called for records forwarded to the Presidential Secretariat by the government in 1985 recommending the officers’ names for the award, within a fortnight.

Intrigued by the withdrawal of the case by the police from a sessions court in July, 1987, the Bench also sought court files pertaining to the criminal case against the 16 persons, of whom admittedly five were women and four minors.

The direction came on a petition filed by Amrik Singh, one of the 16 alleged victims, in 2005, seeking court intervention to “punish” the police officers for “harassing and implicating the petitioner (Singh) and his family members in a false criminal case and for playing fraud against the Government of India for getting the President’s medal”. The petition impleads Home Ministry, Commissioner of Police, Delhi, besides Kanth and another officer S S Menon.

Singh, in his petition, recounted that a mob had collected outside his family’s Paharganj residence on November 5, 1984, a week after the assassination of then PM Indira Gandhi. When the mob attacked his uncle, Amir Singh, the petitoner’s father, Faqir Singh, fired from his licensed gun, the petition said. In a short while, a joint contingent of the army and the police—the latter was led by Kanth, a deputy commissioner then— arrived on the scene, it says.

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