Calling the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Home Minister Narshimha Rao, the prime conspirators in the mass murder of Sikhs in the November 1984 massacre, Dal Khalsa today asked the Shiromani Akali Dal Badal leadership to pursue the Modi government to start a posthumous trial of the two instead of “doing lip service to the cause of justice and indulging in tomfoolery by blackening faces of genocide perpetrators.”

When two youth activists Gurdeep Singh Gosha and Meetpal Singh Dugri of Shiromani Akali Dal blackened a virtually unknown statue of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, on the outskirts of Ludhiana town in the nondescript colony at Salem Tabri, the state Congress leadership followed by the Badal leadership went into a tizzy.

Punjab CM Amarinder Singh ordered strict action against Meeta and Gurdeep Singh Gosha in the backdrop of his clean chit for the November 1984 Delhi massacre to Rajiv Gandhi and the Gandhi family and sought an apology from the Akali Dal leadership. Sukhbir Singh Badal retorted by saying that Captain Amarinder Singh is not a good Sikh as he is siding with the Rajiv Gandhi, whom he called the killer of the Sikhs in November 1984.

Dal Khalsa leaders Harpal Singh Cheema and Kanwar Pal Singh, in a joint statement said that, “Akalis should bring the main conspirators of genocide to justice instead of just harping on the withdrawal of Bharat Ratna Award to Rajiv Gandhi, which is of secondary importance.”

How will the cause of justice to the victim families be served by removal of Rajiv Gandhi’s names from public schemes of the government of India?, asked the party leaders.

“Badals should rightly avail advantage of the blind support they had given to their alliance partner Bharatiya Janta Party to unmask the then Prime Minister and Home Minister of India who engineered the anti-Sikh pogrom, they remarked.

Commenting on Akali youth leaders defacing Rajiv’s statue, they said blackening the face of a person whose black deeds are wide open is just a symbolic act. Sharply reacting to the shameless deed of Congress party worker Gursimran Singh Mand, who cleaned the blackened statue with his turban in full public view, they said that, “it was pity that mental slavery and sycophancy has entered into the veins of some such Sikhs.”

An unbailable offence of “creating enmities between two communities” has been registered by the Ludhiana police and one of the youth leaders Gurdeep Singh Gosha has been arrested with the fully party leadership of Ludhiana coming to the defence of the duo.

Dal Khalsa’ statement said that the convictions of leaders who led the massacre in November 1984 was a case of too little too little and that they await the turn of convicted killer Sajjan Kumar landing in Tihar jail.