New Delhi: The BJP accused the Congress on Wednesday of working to deny justice to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots victims and also targeted Kamal Nath, the opposition party’s chief in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, saying he was removed as the party’s in-charge for the Punjab Assembly polls following protests by Sikhs.
A day after a Delhi court awarded death sentence to an accused and life imprisonment to another in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said the probe carried out by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up by the Narendra Modi government led to the sentencing.
“We (BJP) are very satisfied,” the Union minister told reporters about his party’s stand on the verdict and added that people needed to be told that the Congress had, during its rule, tried to ensure that the Sikh riot victims did not get justice.
The opposition party did it to save its own people, Prasad alleged. There was no reaction to the court verdict from the Congress Wednesday, but its spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi had welcomed it Tuesday.
“The Congress’s stand is clear. This is a legal process, a legal process which must be allowed to work out its course and we are very proud, happy and fortunate that it is taking its course,” Singhvi had told reporters. Tuesday’s court verdict gave some sort of a balm to those suffering for over 30-35 years, Prasad said.
The law minister said his party wanted to assure the Sikhs, especially those whose families had suffered, that the SIT would probe the cases honestly, without any undue outside interference, and take action against the guilty.
Targeting Nath, who has been accused by some Sikh bodies of having links to the riots, Prasad noted that the Congress had removed him as its in-charge for the Punjab polls last year following protests by people. (PTI)
