’84 Riots
Convert affidavits into FIRs, demands Sikh body
Naveen S. Garewal
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, February 12
The All-India Sikh Conference has demanded that all affidavits filed before various commissions and courts by eyewitnesses of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots should be converted into FIRs.
“There is sufficient evidence available against 10,000 people who continue to roam about freely on Delhi roads after massacring 5,000 innocent Sikhs. But, powerful politicians are preventing courts from bringing justice”.
Stating that successive government have been trying to help people like Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar, Kamal Nath, who were in the forefront of the anti-Sikh riots, president of the All-India Sikh Conference (Babbar) Gurcharan Singh Babbar said if the affidavits available with the government forming the part of various commissions and instigations were converted into FIRs, many witnesses would come forward to retreat their submissions.
“How is it possible that the director of revenue intelligence (DRI) raided my house and offices and took away all material I had collected against those guilty of perpetuating crimes against Sikhs and subsequently destroyed it? After all this was not a matter that related to revenue, he was directed by Jagdish Tytler and Gulam Nabi Azad to do so”, Babbar alleged.
Babbar said he had received fresh threats from those responsible for the riots for his sustained campaign to pressurise the government to book the guilty.
He demanded that he be provided a licensed weapon to defend himself. But, he made it clear that if something were to happen to him, Jagdish Tytler would be responsible.
“I have definite and specific information that an assassin has been hired to eliminate me”, he said.
The Delhi-based Sikh activist also appealed to the Sikh community across the world to persuade Jasbir Singh, who is based in California, to come to India and appear before the Delhi High Court to state what he had witnessed in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
“The next hearing is scheduled for February 27 and Jasbir must tell the court what he saw, or else thousands of criminals and their henchmen will go scot free”.
The CBI is telling the government that it does not have any evidence to nail the culprits, “I appeal to Jasbir and others like him to come forward and tell the world what they saw”.
Gurcharan Singh, who was himself declared a “wanted” person by the government, said he had suffered humiliation and atrocities at the hands of those who did not want him to pursue the “killers of Sikhs in Delhi”, but his crusade to expose the criminals will continue.
Meanwhile, the All-India Sikh Student’s Federation, has claimed that it has managed to persuade yet another eyewitness, Surinder Singh, to come and make a statement on what he saw during the riots.
