A sense of relief that Delhi Congress leader Sajjan Kumar, at long last, has been convicted for his role in the mass killings of Sikhs in the capital following the assassination of Indira Gandhi must be tinged with a strong sense of regret that quite a few other leaders of the party involved in the pogrom have got away unscathed. On Tuesday, the Delhi High Court set aside the order of the trial court in April 2013 exonerating Kumar and awarded life term to the Delhi Congress strongman who was elected to parliament multiple times.
Kumar, 73, will now spend the rest of his life in jail. While admiring the courage and dogged spirit of Jagmeet Kaur, whose husband, son and three cousins were burnt alive before her eyes in October 31 – November 1, 1984, — she was 16 years old then — the High Court said ‘ … she comes across as a fearless and truthful witness.’ Indeed, there was no lack of evidence and eyewitnesses to prove conclusively the complicity of senior Congress leaders in the mass murder of Sikhs. Nearly 3,000 perished in that mob frenzy of madness, aided and abetted by the police and supported by the senior leadership of the then ruling party. But successive Congress governments were determined to deny justice to the survivors of that darkest chapter in the life of free India.
A number of commissions and committees that were set up failed to deliver justice, with some of them openly engaging in a whitewash job. So deep was the conspiracy to put a tight lid on the killings that a former Chief Justice of India who headed a commission of inquiry virtually absolved people like Kumar, suggesting that the killings were spontaneous due to the anger of the people at the assassination of the then prime minister by her Sikh guards. The said former Chief Justice of India was soon rewarded with nomination to the Rajya Sabha.
Why, the complicity of the highest in the Congress government and party was clear from when Rajiv Gandhi virtually justified the mass killings, remarking that when a big tree falls, the earth shakes ( jab bada ped girta hain, to dharti hilta hain.’). Of course, Kumar was not the only one who led murderous mobs on a three-day killing spree. H K L Bhagat, a former Union Minister and Delhi Congress chief, along with Jagdish Tytler, competed with Kumar to log maximum number of killings in their respective parliamentary constituencies. Tytler is still facing trial in several cases while Bhagat died a few years ago. Another prominent leader whose name has invariably featured in this context is Kamal Nath.
The newly-sworn Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh was given the benefit of the doubt by the Nanavati Commission set up by the Vajpayee Government. However, several witnesses, including a reporter of a leading English language daily in the capital, are still around to confirm Nath’s controversial role. Of course, Nath denies he went to the Rakabganj Gurdwara that fateful day to oversee Sikh killings. No, he had gone there ‘when asked by Rajiv Gandhi to see what was all the commotion about in the area.’
The conviction of Kumar after 34 years also underlines the systemic failure to bring to justice the perpetrators of communal riots in which several lives were lost. The Delhi High Court mentioned the mass killings in the Partition, in Mumbai 1993, Gujarat 2002, Kandhamal in 2008, Muzaffarnagar 2013. Due process in bringing to justice mob violence become further difficult thanks to the complicity of the politicians and the civil and police authorities.
The court noted how the 1984 riots were supported by the Congress Party and abetted by the police and the state machinery. No other riot before or since Partition was as one-sided as was the 1984 pogrom. Nearly 3,000 Sikhs perished at the hands of the murderous mobs but no one from any other community or from the police or paramilitary forces suffered even a scratch.
And the Lok Sabha election that was held soon after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the Congress ran a most communal campaign, to exploit the anti-Sikh sentiment in the country. Because the blame for mob violence is generally difficult to pin down on individual perpetrators, justice has been denied to victims over a long period of time. But it may be time to relook at the entire system of policing, investigation, prosecution, etc., in order to curb incidents of mob mayhem.
Editorial
