1984 Anti-Sikh Riot Report Creates Controversy

August 9, 2005

Source: swissinfo

Wire Service: Reuters

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5996146&cKey=1123573856000

On August 9, 2005 Reuters reported, "India's parliament was disrupted on Tuesday as rival lawmakers clashed over a report on anti-Sikh riots in 1984 which named ruling Congress party leaders in connection with the violence in which nearly 3,000 Sikhs [died]. Opposition lawmakers want the government to take action against a junior minister, Jagdish Tytler, who the report said may have instigated rioters after then prime minister Indira Gandhi was killed by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984. But the Congress party-led coalition government headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, himself a Sikh, said it would take no action against Tytler as the panel had found no conclusive evidence against him. Tytler has denied the charges. The inquiry report by retired judge G.T. Nanavati, which was presented in parliament on Monday, probed one of India's worst religious riots, which broke out across the north of the country after Gandhi was assassinated on October 31, 1984. Media reports and human rights groups say the Congress party -- which was ruling the country at the time in 1984 -- had a hand in organising the killings, a charge denied by the party."