M A I N   N E W S

Identify, punish ’84 riot guilty, says Badal
Govt planning to reopen some cases: Jaitley
Syed Ali Ahmed
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 1
Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today asked the government to identify and punish political leaders and police officers responsible for the killing of thousands of innocent people during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

Signalling the beginning of work on a memorial to the riot victims at New Delhi’s Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib, Badal called the event historic. The memorial will have a wall, water body and a rock. The Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) had laid the foundation stone of the memorial last year after the Congress government refused to allot land.

The memorial was highlighted by the Shiromani Akali Dal during the DSGMC elections.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who was also present at the event, told mediapersons the government was planning to reopen cases that had been closed for all these years so that the guilty could be punished.

Addressing a gathering at the start of the construction work, Badal said the 1984 riots were the fourth genocide (“Ghallu Ghara”) committed against the Sikhs in which thousands of people were killed in Delhi and other cities soon after former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination. The first two were committed by Mughal kings at Sangrur and Gurdaspur in which 35,000 and 15,000 Sikhs were killed, respectively.

The third genocide — Operation Bluestar — was committed at Harmandar Sahib in Amritsar. The last two were committed during the Congress rule, he added.

“The massacre was orchestrated by political leaders. Those involved in the conspiracy and killings were given security by the then government. It further rubbed salt into the wounds of the Sikh community by giving ministries to the politicians and promoting guilty police officers,” Badal said.

He asked the government to rehabilitate the victims.