Hamirpur: Leader of Opposition and senior BJP leader Prem Kumar Dhumal has supported Akali Dal’s demand for a SIT probe into the 1984 Sikh Massacre.
While talking to the press at Hamirpur, Dhumal alleged that many Congress leaders were actively involved in the killing of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984.
Dhumal sited the example of recent Rahul Gandhi interview where he has himself admitted role of Congress leaders in the riots and added that action should be taken against culprit and guilty should be punished.
Riots were started after the assassination of Indira Gandhi on 31 October 1984, by two of her Sikh bodyguards, anti-Sikh riots erupted on 1 November 1984, and continued in some areas for days, killing more than 3,000 Sikhs.
As per the reports mobs carried iron rods, knives, clubs, and combustible material, including kerosene and swarmed into Sikh neighbourhoods, arbitrarily killing any Sikh men or women they could find. Their shops and houses were ransacked and burned. In other incidents, armed mobs stopped buses and trains, in and around Delhi, pulling out Sikh passengers to be lynched or doused with kerosene and burnt alive. Others were dragged out from their homes and hacked to death with bladed weapons.
Numerous commissions have been set up to investigate the riots. The most recent commission on the pogroms, headed by Justice G.T. Nanavati, submitted its 185-page report to the Home Minister, Shivraj Patil on 9 February 2005 and the report was tabled in Parliament on 8 August 2005.
Ten commissions and committees have so far enquired into the riots. However, many of the primary accused, including senior Congress leaders were acquitted or never charge-sheeted. There are allegations that the government had destroyed evidence and shielded the guilty.
After the Rahul Gandhi interview, Congress is also concerned that Rahul Gandhi has inserted anti-Sikh riots into the political discourse, shrinking its elbow room to attack Narendra Modi on the issue of anti-Muslim carnage. Even Sikh groups were also protesting and demanding action against perpetrators.
