Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Union Home Minister Chidamberam’s cheek was perhaps symbolic of the CBI in the eyes of journalist Jarnail Singh, who hurled his shoe at him in a Press conference at New Delhi on 7 April 2009.
The carnage to which Sikhs were, as a community, subjected by the Congress hoodlums following Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 has remained and will remain forever the darkest deed Indian democracy has been forced to tolerate.
That was a deliberate attempt to demoralize the brave segment of Indian citizenry that has proudly given maximum numbers of martyrs to the motherland.
Congress was to gain by denigrating the Sikhs as a community as under that peculiar condition it had no other way to divert public attention from the anarchy it had created under Indira Gandhi and her sycophants.
In fact Congress was eager to get rid of Indira Gandhi.
With her assassination it had bagged two definite gains. Firstly, it could get rid of her under whom ambition of any other person in Congress for the top post was impossible to be fulfilled and secondly, by subjecting in a meticulously organized manner the Sikhs to massacre and arson and humiliation, it succeeded in diverting public attention from its unbearable misrule and simultaneously succeeded in cultivating sympathy votes to grab power.
Justice Ranganath Mishra, whose report on whether or not the violence was organized was as viewed as an act of jumbling up as considered to have been aimed at shielding the culprits , was rewarded with a Rajyasabha seat from Orissa and R.K.Dawan, who, in Justice Thakkar’s opinion was the person whom the “needle of suspicion” was sharply pointing at, was rewarded by Rajiv Gandhi with the most lucrative postings in his party as well as in his administration!
The cover-up attempt was so active from the beginning that when Ved Marwah Commission appointed in November 1984 to find out the role of the Police in the carnage was almost ready to submit its report, Marwah was asked by the Home Ministry not to proceed as the Mishra commission was to take up investigation.
Mishra in his evasive report had recommended for inquiry by different fractional Committees.
Posing that action was being taken in the light of Mishra commission report, Committees were created. One such Committee was Kapur Mittal Committee comprising Justice Dalip Kapur and Mrs Kusum Mittal, a retired IAS officer. Appointed in February 1987, this committee was to find out the role Police had played in the anti-Sikh massacre. It tried to improve upon the determination of Marwah. Identifying seventy-two Police Officers, in its report submitted in 1990, it had recommended forthwith dismissal of 30 out of them. No such action was taken
Another Committee comprising Justice M.L. Jain and Mr A.K. Banerjee, a retired IPS officer was formed to superintend over registration of cases on complaints from the victims of the anti-Sikh assaults. After it recommended for registration of case against Congress leader Sajjan Kumar in August 1987, one of his acolytes Brahmanand Gupta moved the High Court of Delhi seeking stay on recommendation of the Committee. The government did not oppose the petition and stay was granted.
The third Committee generated on report of the Mishra Commisstion was the Ahuja Committee that was to ascertain the total number of killings in Delhi. Its report submitted in August 1987, had indicated that in Delhi alone as many as 2,733 as the number of Sikhs were killed.
After lot of deliberate delay caused by Narasingh Rao government, the CBI had to act on the Narula Committee recommendations for registration of cases against H.K.L.Bhagat, Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler.
But the conduct of CBI since then has remained such that it provokes peoples to look at it with suspicion.
Therefore the way the CBI has now again given the clean chit to Tytler is being read as its collaboration with the ruling party, particularly the Congress party and its hoodlums.
In such circumstances, if a disgusted Jarnail Singh threw his shoe at the Home Minister Chidambaram, his chic cannot be held to be the cause of his conniption, but surely the CBI’s suspicious role.
Onus lies on CBI to restore peoples’ faith in it.
If it fails and does not desist from dancing to the tune of politicians in power, it may be impossible to stop Jarnails evolve.