Thaindian News

New Delhi, April 29 (IANS) The Lok Sabha erupted in uproar Thursday over the acquittal of Congress leader Jagdish Tytler in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case.
Raising the matter during zero hour, Akali Dal’s Harsimrat Kaur said the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had helped Tytler to escape the clutches of the law.

“The CBI is working as Congress Bureau of Investigation. The government used the official machinery (to sabotage the case),” Kaur said.

She said no action had been taken against the accused even two decades after the riots in which thousands of Sikhs were killed in 1984 following the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi.

When she quoted former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi as saying that “when a big tree falls, the ground shakes” in connection with the anti-Sikh violence, Congress members protested, leading to a heated exchange between opposition and ruling party MPs.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal said: “What happened in 1984 was not only most tragic, but a most shameful act.”

He, however, asked the Akali Dal MPs not to “bake political cake out of the funeral fire”.

Referring to terrorism in Punjab, Bansal said “these people (Akali Dal MPs) did not have the courage to come out (against it)”.

“Please don’t take political mileage out of it,” Bansal said amid uproar by opposition MPs.

A Delhi court Tuesday gave a clean chit to Tytler, a former union minister, in an anti-Sikh riots case and accepted the CBI closure report that ruled out his involvement.