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Widow Jatha, S.A.D. (Babbar) Demand Justice for 1984 Sikh Massacres

By P.T.I.

The Hindu, Dec. 25, 2002



"A group of women widowed in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 today protested the acquittal of former Congress M.P. Sajjan Kumar in a riots case and demanded a C.B.I. probe into the carnage in which more than 2700 people were killed in the capital. Demanding death penalty for the perpetrators of the pogrom, the women protesting under the banner of Widow Jatha [group] said they would approach the international community if they were denied justice. 'I lost 12 members of my family in the carnage and want the accused to be hanged till death for the crime,' Jatha President Darshan Kaur said. 'If they are not punished we will appeal to the international community for justice,' she added."
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"The protestors, including members of All India Shiromani Akali Dal (Babbar), also held a demonstration here and burnt effigies of Kumar and former Union Ministers H.K.L. Bhagat and Jagdish Tytler. Alleging that Delhi Police had carried out a shoddy probe because of which the accused went scot-free, S.A.D. (Babbar) President Gurcharan Singh Babbar asked: 'How can one expect a fair probe into the case when the investigating agency (Delhi Police) was itself involved in the crime?' Stating that it was the State's duty to provide evidence for the massacres, Babbar said: 'It is a failure of the Central government that even after 18 years of the pogrom, not a single arrest has been made in the case.' He also said that it was wrong to term the pogrom as 'riots.' 'It was a well planned genocide by the Congress party,' he alleged and added Sikhs and Hindus can never fight as they have same roots."
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