The Supreme Court also upheld the life sentence awarded to four persons for burning two men to death during 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

A bench of justices P Sathasivam and M Y Eqbal turned down the plea of the convicts that they could not be held guilty of murder as the body was not recovered by the Delhi police and there was delay in lodging FIR in the case.

"It is well-settled that discovery of dead body of the victim has never been considered as the only mode of proving the corpus delicti (evidence) in murder.

"In fact, there are many cases of such nature like the present one where the discovery of dead body is impossible, specially when members of a particular community were murdered in such a violent mob attack on Sikh community in different places and offenders tried to remove the dead bodies and also looted articles," it said.