Opposition politicians forced parliament to adjourn and Sikhs staged rallies yesterday to protest the Indian government's refusal to prosecute a federal minister implicated in the killings of thousands of Sikhs following the 1984 assassination of former prime minister Indira Gandhi.
A report of an investigation into the killings led by retired Supreme Court Judge G.T. Nanavati, released Monday, found there was credible evidence that Jagdish Tytler, the current minister in charge of nonresident Indian affairs, was "very probably" involved in organizing attacks on Sikhs in New Delhi.
The report was given to officials earlier this year, and they said Monday that after reviewing it they had decided not to prosecute anyone for allegedly taking part in or organizing the riots.
PHOTO: AP
As soon as Parliament opened yesterday, lawmakers from the opposition, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), began shouting, forcing both houses to adjourn.
"We have decided we will demand action against Tytler," BJP spokeswoman Sushma Swaraj told reporters afterward. "We will demand the prime minister's resignation. We want to expose the Congress party."
The leader of a group of victims of the 1984 riots, Kuldeep Singh Bhogal, said earlier yesterday that "we have lost all faith in government. We were denied justice 21 years back and no justice has been given now."
Hindu mobs killed nearly 3,000 Sikhs in the capital and elsewhere in India in backlash riots after Gandhi was assassinated in October 1984 by her Sikh bodyguards. The Congress party, which currently governs India, was also in power at the time of the riots.
The government said the bodyguards had been seeking revenge after the Indian army attacked the Sikh religion's holiest shrine, the Golden Temple, in June 1984 to rout out alleged separatists holed up there.
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