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Tytler set to walk free as Cong courts shame again
Will India's civil society now rise to the occasion and take the fight forward?

NEW DELHI: Hous after this WSN edition will reach the readers' hands, a court in India will open the sealed cover in which the CBI, India's top sleuthing agency, has submitted a report on the role of Jagdish Tytler in the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide. This is CBI's final investigation report. Here's tomorrow's news today: The CBI report exonerates Jagdish Tytler, and he will walk away with the clean chit to go and get busy with his election campaign once again in Delhi.

Delhi.The city on whose roads hundreds of thousands of Sikh men, women and children ran for safety as blood thirsty mobs led by Tytler and his ilk chased and hunted down Sikh men and burnt them alive to death. At a time when law is catching up with the killers of Muslims in Gujarat, it is sad that India's investigative agency and the ruling Congress party have once again failed the community.

Sonia Gandhi's words of regret have been rendered meaningless, Manmohan Singh's apology will lose all relevance and the only forces that will be strengthened will be the likes of Varun Gandhi and such poster boys of Hindutva who will set the agenda, an agenda which the Congress too soft plays but an agenda which will some day consume the Congress itself.

The CBI last Saturday submitted its final report before the court of metropolitan magistrate Ram Lal Meena at Karkardooma. It is to come up for hearing on April 2.

Sonia Gandhi is well aware of the contents, and that explains the cheek to give a ticket to Tytler who is now the Congress candidate from North-East Delhi.

The CBI had on September 29, 2007 also tried to close the case against Tytler but when the media shamed it by tracking down the witnesses the CBI claimed were not to be found, the plan went kapoot. On December 19, 2007, it was asked to file the investigation report after Jasbir Singh, a California-based witness, surfaced and expressed his willingness to depose against the Congress leader. The CBI also recorded the testimonies of Surinder Singh, the granthi who too was a witness.

H S Phoolka, senior counsel for Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee, strongly opposed the CBI plea that the matter should be put for further hearing after April 20. The metropolitan magistrate, Ram Lal Meena, allowed his plea and fixed the hearing for April 2.

Hundreds of Sikhs gathered outside the Karkardooma courts since the morning and raised slogans against Tytler and other senior Congress leaders like Sajjan Kumar and Kamal Nath for their alleged involvement in the riots. All the three leaders are Congress nominees for different Lok Sabha seats in coming elections. While Tytler's case is still pending, Kumar's acquittal in one case has been appealed against in the Delhi High Court.

The relatives of the riot victims have demanded capital punishment for the culprits.

The case against Tytler relates to an incident on November 1, 1984, when a mob had set afire Gurudwara Pulbangash killing three persons in the riots that broke out after the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Singh had told the Nanavati Commission on August 31, 2000, that "he had overheard Tytler rebuking his men on the night of November 3, 1984, for nominal killing of Sikhs in his constitutency.''

The fact remains that the Sikh community has done its best to get justice. From here onwards, it is up to the civil society of India to rise to the occasion and take the fight forward. This is the time to prove that justice is not dead, and those who want it know how to extract it.