Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal (file pic)
Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung today gave his consent to the Aam Aadmi Party government's recommendation to set to a Special Investigation Team to probe afresh the riots that erupted across the city after Indira Gandhi's assassination at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards.
The proposal to set up a SIT to investigate the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 was a part of the AAP's manifesto for the Delhi assembly polls. With the Liutenant Governor acceding to the Delhi government's recommendation, Mr Kejriwal's AAP has scored a major political point ahead of the Lok Sabha polls due by May. The SIT probe is expected to endear the rookie party to the communal riots of 2002.Sikh community.
The Delhi government had earlier this month forwarded to the Lieutenant Governor its proposal to set up the SIT. The move came within days of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's claim, made in an interview to private news channel, that the Rajiv Gandhi government had taken immediate steps to control the riots in November, 1984. He contrasted the alacrity with which the Congress government had reacted with the Narendra Modi government's alleged failure to rein in the post-Godhra riots of 2002.
Mr Gandhi's remarks were greeted with protests from Sikh organizations.
"Out of four cases which were reopened in 2005 by the Central Bureau of Investigation, they found that three cases contain important proofs. Manipulation in reports were done to save the culprits,'' observed H S Phoolka, Delhi High Court lawyer and AAP member who has been pursuing the cases relating to anti-Sikh riots.
Sikh groups have alleged that the probe into the 1984 riots was motivated by political considerations. A former CBI joint-director of been reopened.the CBI, who was associated with the probe, had told NDTV on February 5 that the agency may have come under pressure to give a clean chit to former union mnister Jagdish Tytler. The case has now.