’84 riots victims march to demand justice
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Nov 1 — Fourteen years after the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, the issue of punishing the guilty was once again brought into focus today in two separate moves.

The victims of the November ’84 riots took out a march and demanded that the guilty be brought to book. They also appealed to the government to speed up the process of ensuring justice for them.

Meanwhile, in a letter to the Congress President, Mrs Sonia Gandhi the former firebrand Rajya Sabha member, Mr Surinder Singh Ahluwalia congratulated the party for the proposed declaration in its manifesto that action would definitely be taken against those guilty for the November 1984 riots.

"The party took 14 long years to make a move like this...Anyway now the party has decided to do a good job like this, I must congratulate you," Mr Ahluwalia said.

The riot victims, in a memorandum to the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, pointed out that the Bharatiya Janata Party had promised that the guilty would be punished if it came to power. "But it seems that the government has turned a deaf ear to it," the memorandum said.

Mr Ahluwalia said the Congress should not give tickets to mafia dons and those leaders who engineered the riots.