WHO among Indian leaders is the true maut ka saudagar? Will anyone please dare to tell the truth? When Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh security guards, what followed was, even now, unbelievable. Congress ‘leaders’ went out to the streets calling for vengeance, suggesting that even Hindus offering shelter to Sikhs must be killed and their houses burnt. Over 3,000 innocent Sikhs were killed cold-bloodedly and not once did the Congress apologise for it. In truest sense it was a ‘pogrom’ seldom, if ever, was seen in the past. How many Hindus were killed? Not one. But many of those Congressmen who instigated killing of Sikhs have apparently gotten away with murder. Among them in Sajjan Kumar, who recently was acquitted by a court.
Writes The Hindu (2 May): “The acquittal of Congress leader Sajjan Kumar in 1984 riot case extinguishes every glimmer of hope for substantial justice to the Sikh victims of the bloody pogrom that took place in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination… The verdict is bound to reinforce the view that politically well-connected persons will continue to evade the law”. According to the paper, “One must fault the agency (CBI) for limiting its chargesheet”. It said: “The Agency ought to have more diligently pushed a possible conspiracy angle… given the deliberate inaction on the part of the Delhi police and in some cases its active collaboration.”
Hindustan Times (2 May) said “Many are not willing to accept that the Congress leader Sajjan Kumar who has been acquitted by a special CBI court… is really innocent.” Also, it said “Studies have shown that many of the children who witnessed the unspeakable brutalities have grown up to become… psychologically marred”. No one seems to care. Not the Congress, anyway. DNA (May 2) said “Congress leaders never really did a serious self-introspection after the Sikh tragedy”, that “successive governments have prevailed upon investigating agencies either to defer pursuing the cases in a thorough manner or to trivialize the massacre”. Kumar’s acquittal, said the paper “has every reason to be interpreted as a politically engineered investigation which was never meant to deliver justice.”
The Times of India (3 May) said the “wave of protests that has followed the acquittal of Congress leader Sajjan Kumar must be seen for what it is: A genuine reaction against both the verdict itself and against the inordinate judicial delay…” What seems true is that the CBI can be manipulated by the government. Consider this in the context of the Gujarat riots following the beastly killing of over 55 innocent women and children in a railway coach. Narendra Modi got into action on the very day of the Godhra massacre when 217 preventive arrests were made out of which 137 were Hindus and 80 were Muslims. The Chief Secretary issued orders to use force, including shoot-at-sight. Several Hindus were killed. Now think of what the media has to say about the CBI operations in the Coalgate Scandal. The CBI should not have shared its status report with the government but that is exactly what it did.
The Times of India noted (2 May) that “on finding that not only did CBI get its investigation report looked over by the very offices whose decisions were being probed but that the government’s most senior law officers then misled the Supreme Court about the same in ‘a vital erosion of trust’ shaking the very foundations of independent investigation.” Among other things the paper said: “What the police and CBI really need is to be freed from a political class that is clinging on illegitimate privileges, whether at the Centre or at the level of the states, in the hands of long-ruling Congress…”
Shocked at the manner in which the UPA government allegedly tried to manipulate a CBI report, The Free Press Journal (April 27) said that “whatever the gloss apologists of the UPA government might seek to put on it, the truth is that the continuation of Law Minister Ashwani Kumar has become untenable” and “he must go”.
