Joginder Singh, a businessman from Gorakhpur, says the Sikh community is still in mourning over the ’84 targeted genocide. His views:
The violent attacks on Sikhs and their properties in 1984 were not confined to Delhi NCR. Those flames took a communal colour and also singed many parts of Uttar Pradesh. Here in Gorakhpur our business establishments were reduced to ashes by the unruly mob. Three of my shops were burnt while the police and the administration remained a mute spectator. An entire community was blemished for a crime committed by a couple of Sikh blinded by; they were eventually hanged.
Although the scars inflicted on our psyches can never be removed by any balm, what has rubbed salt on our wounds is the slow and tardy pace of justice that kept dragging its feet. And now when the judiciary did deliver a judgment to one of the accused (Sajjan Kumar), it pronounced the “minimum sentence of life imprisonment” for murder to the convict. Be it Sajjan Kumar, Jagdish Tytler, Kamalnath or others, what is the point of delivering a life imprisonment when they have lived and enjoyed their life at the fullest?
I came to know from media reports that Sajjan Kumar’s lawyer pleaded for leniency due to his old age (80 years). My question is: why was then the judiciary waited for four decades in passing the judgment? The decision has been pronounced on the basis of the evidences placed before the court and I believe that these evidences were always there for everyone to see. Why did the judiciary take such a long time to hear cases of such national importance?
We as a community have not only been demanding capital punishment for all the accused from day one, we also feel that the cases related to the genocide should have been heard in a fast track court. Four decades have passed. These cases fall under the rarest of the rare category, as the 1984 riots were a pre-planned genocide orchestrated by the Congress leadership.
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We also wonder as how the CBI gave a clean chit to Tytler (earlier in 2010) who was boastfully heading the mob and was clearly involved in the murders along with other Congress leaders. Clearly, it was the change of guard in 2014 that set the judicial wheels rolling; we are hopeful that all those guilty Congress leaders and others will be suitably punished in this lifetime; remember one of the main accused, HKL Bhagat passed away amid this sluggish pace of justice delivery.
We are upset that someone like Sajjan Kumar was not given the death penalty. I believe if he had been given a death sentence, it could have assuaged our emotions, and we would have felt satisfied… Now we see the truth in the dictum that justice delayed is justice denied.
The Sikh community, still mourning the loss of their loved ones, hopes that this sentencing will bring some measure of closure and justice for the victims and their families. It has been a very long, painful and never-ending wait for innocent victims who were murdered by those in power. Nobody involved in any riot should be allowed to escape by the long arm of the law, no matter how powerful the individual maybe.
As told to Rajat Rai
