Demonstrators sit on rail tracks during a protest demanding that orchestrators of the anti-Sikh riots are punished, in Amritsar yesterday.

 

Agencies/New Delhi/Bangaluru

 

The central government was yesterday asked to reopen all cases and re-investigate the 1984 massacre of over 3,000 Sikhs following the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi.

A large number of people participated in an online campaign by Amnesty International India in Delhi and Bangaluru to call for justice to the 1984 carnage victims.

Amnesty International India Programmes director Shailesh Rai said in Delhi: “This year marks 30 years of impunity for the crimes committed during one of India’s most shameful episodes. It is a national disgrace that thousands of victims and survivors of the 1984 violence have been denied justice for three decades now.”

The respondents also urged the government to establish an independent team to conduct thorough, impartial and effective investigations into all cases of all anti-Sikh violence in 1984.

Rai said though official inquiry commissions were appointed to investigate the massacre, and some found evidence of complicity of police officials and Congress leaders, nothing concrete was done to punish them.

He said: “The Indian government cannot continue abdicating its responsibility to punish those who were behind the violence against Sikh men, women and children in 1984. Authorities must heed the voices of the thousands who are calling for justice.”

He added: “The sheer scale of the impunity for the 1984 massacre is staggering, and has also been used to downplay other incidents of mass violence. As long as the perpetrators of the carnage go unpunished, the rule of law in India remains weakened.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday called the massacre of Sikhs a “dagger” blow to national unity, as the government snubbed a ceremony marking the anniversary of her death.

Modi’s statements drew Congress charges he had politicised the normally non-partisan commemoration of Gandhi’s killing.

India’s “Iron Lady” was assassinated on October 31, 1984 by her Sikh bodyguards, in revenge for an attack on the Golden Temple to clear separatist militants.

For the first time, Congress officials said, no government representative turned up at the rose-strewn memorial for the annual event on Friday, which was attended by Indira’s daughter-in-law Sonia, 67 - who cradled the leader’s head in her lap as she bled to death -  and grandson and political scion, Rahul, 44.

Modi tweeted he joined his “countrymen and women in remembering” Indira Gandhi, known for her strong and sometimes divisive leadership.

But Modi alluded in a speech to the massacre of Sikhs after her killing, which he said “shook the country and left it deeply scarred.”

Congress leader Anand Sharma called the way the government marked the anniversary “disgusting” and “petty-minded,” and accused Modi of seeking to score political points.

But, said Modi, “a country that forgets history can’t make history”.

“That incident (the riots) was not a wound in the heart of any community. It was a dagger in the centuries-old fabric of India’s unity,” he said.

“Our own people were murdered,” he said.

A 2004 report tabled in parliament said “credible material” against some Congress leaders indicated “very probably” they were involved in the riots, but none has been convicted.

Sikh leader Onkar Singh Thapar told reporters on Friday: “We won’t sit silent” until the orchestrators of the riots are punished.

“The people responsible are still free or have passed on,” Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said.