India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Scores of Sikhs brought the National Highway to halt in Ludhiana here on Wednesday to demand death penalty for Congress leader Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler accused in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case. The protestors, which included both men and women, stalled the National Highway 1, by squatting on the road and burning tyres to seek justice. They later raised slogans against Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi and burnt their effigies. "Today the faces of Punjab state parliamentarians have been exposed. Thousands of Sikhs in Delhi, Bokaro, Kanpur were slaughtered. Till now no court proceedings have been done against neither Jagdish Tytler nor Sajjan Kumar," said Surjeet Singh, a protestor. "And CBI on the direction of Sonia Gandhi has given them clean chit. Our struggle and our fight would continue until Sajjan Kumar, Kamal Nath and murderer of Sikhs Jadish Tytler are handed till death," he added. Agitated Sikhs also expressed ire against Punjab Congress leaders Pratap Singh Bajwa and Ravneet Singh Bittu, who recently defended the party in the Parliament. Earlier on April 27, a Karkardooma court in New Delhi let off Jagdish Tytler in connection with the riots case after accepting the closure report submitted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that gave a clean chit to him. Giving a clean cheat to Tytler, the court further said there was no ground to order further investigation in the case. The CBI had submitted that there was nothing to proceed against 66-year-old Tytler as two witnesses, Jasbir Singh and Surinder Singh, were not reliable and their statements were ''false and concocted''. Earlier on April 2, the CBI had given a clean chit to Tytler. De-sealing its final investigation report in a court, the CBI has recommended quashing of FIR against Tytler. On March 28, the CBI filed the report in a sealed envelope before Metropolitan Magistrate Ram Lal Meena. Tytler was among the three prominent leaders named along with Sajjan Kumar and the late HKL Bhagat in the reports on anti-Sikh riots. The 1984 anti-Sikh riots, which claimed the lives of almost 3000 Sikhs, were triggered by the assassination of Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984 by two of her Sikh bodyguards.

Sikhs demand death sentence for Sajjan Kumar, Jagdish Tytler