The stain of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi refuses to go away from haunting the Congress. On Monday, Akali Dal leader and former deputy chief minister of Punjab Sukhbir Singh Badal accused then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi of 'supervising' the riots.
Badal was responding to claims by Congress leader Jagdish Tytler in an interview with a TV news channel that Rajiv had travelled with him across Delhi several times to assess the situation.
While Tytler claimed that Rajiv wanted him and other Congress MPs to contain the situation then, Badal alleges the former PM was 'supervising' the violence. Badal demanded the CBI inquire into the claims.
Tytler is one of several prominent Congress leaders who have been accused of actively fomenting the violence, in which over 2,000 Sikhs were killed in the wake of the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi, who was Rajiv's mother.
In 2015, the Narendra Modi government had announced a special investigating team would probe into unsolved cases in the riots. However, progress has been slow.
(With agency inputs)
