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Tytler set to walk free as Cong
courts shame again
Will
India's
civil society now rise to the occasion and take the fight forward?
WSN Bureau
 NEW
DELHI: Hous after this WSN edition will reach the readers' hands, a
court in India will open the sealed cover in which the CBI,
India's
top sleuthing agency, has submitted a report on the role of Jagdish
Tytler in the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide. This is CBI's final
investigation report. Here's tomorrow's news today: The CBI report
exonerates Jagdish Tytler, and he will walk away with the clean chit
to go and get busy with his election campaign once again in Delhi.
Delhi.The
city on whose roads hundreds of thousands of Sikh men, women and
children ran for safety as blood thirsty mobs led by Tytler and his
ilk chased and hunted down Sikh men and burnt them alive to death.
At a time when law is catching up with the killers of Muslims in
Gujarat,
it is sad that India's investigative agency and the ruling Congress
party have once again failed the community.
Sonia Gandhi's
words of regret have been rendered meaningless, Manmohan Singh's
apology will lose all relevance and the only forces that will be
strengthened will be the likes of Varun Gandhi and such poster boys
of Hindutva who will set the agenda, an agenda which the Congress
too soft plays but an agenda which will some day consume the
Congress itself.
The CBI last
Saturday submitted its final report before the court of metropolitan
magistrate Ram Lal Meena at Karkardooma. It is to come up for
hearing on April 2.
Sonia Gandhi is
well aware of the contents, and that explains the cheek to give a
ticket to Tytler who is now the Congress candidate from
North-East
Delhi.
The CBI had on
September
29, 2007 also tried to close the case against Tytler but when the
media shamed it by tracking down the witnesses the CBI claimed were
not to be found, the plan went kapoot. On December 19, 2007, it was
asked to file the investigation report after Jasbir Singh, a
California-based witness, surfaced and expressed his willingness to
depose against the Congress leader. The CBI also recorded the
testimonies of Surinder Singh, the granthi who too was a witness.
H S Phoolka,
senior counsel for Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee,
strongly opposed the CBI plea that the matter should be put for
further hearing after April 20. The metropolitan magistrate, Ram Lal
Meena, allowed his plea and fixed the hearing for April 2.
Hundreds of
Sikhs gathered outside the Karkardooma courts since the morning and
raised slogans against Tytler and other senior Congress leaders like
Sajjan Kumar and Kamal Nath for their alleged involvement in the
riots. All the three leaders are Congress nominees for different Lok
Sabha seats in coming elections. While Tytler's case is still
pending, Kumar's acquittal in one case has been appealed against in
the Delhi High Court.
The relatives of
the riot victims have demanded capital punishment for the culprits.
The case against
Tytler relates to an incident on November 1, 1984, when a mob had
set afire Gurudwara Pulbangash killing three persons in the riots
that broke out after the assassination of the then Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi. Singh had told the Nanavati Commission on
August 31, 2000,
that "he had overheard Tytler rebuking his men on the night of
November 3, 1984, for nominal killing of Sikhs in his constitutency.''
The fact remains
that the Sikh community has done its best to get justice. From here
onwards, it is up to the civil society of
India to rise to
the occasion and take the fight forward. This is the time to prove
that justice is not dead, and those who want it know how to extract
it.
1 April 2009
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