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.