NEW YORK: The US court for the Southern District of New York has issued summons to India's Congress Party in a class action law suit filed by US-based Sikh Group, ‘Sikhs For Justice’ (SFJ), to answer charges of ‘conspiring, aiding, abetting and carrying out organised attacks on the Sikh population of India in November, 1984.
The complaint also referred to the February 2011 discovery of a "mass grave" of Sikhs who were killed in November 1984 in Haryana.
A large-scale Sikh pogrom was initiated when Indra Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, was shot dead by her two Sikh bodyguards as she walked from residential quarters to her office.
The assassination was prompted by sacrilege of the Golden Temple, committed in an assault by the Indian Army in June 1984, which was ordered by Indra to flush out Sikh extremists from the ‘most sacred’ Sikh Gurdawara in Amritsar.
The murderous mobs targeting Sikhs were led by prominent Congress party leaders, none of whom has been brought to book despite ample evidence.
According to SFJ legal advisor Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, "the gravity, scale and specially the organised nature of the attacks was concealed by the Indian governments portraying them merely as `November 1984 anti-Sikh riots of Delhi' and not the nation-wide pogrom of the community, which these actually were.
"Terming the anti-Sikh violence as riots instead of genocide and by failing to punish the leaders of Congress (I), the Government of India had violated its responsibilities under Article 1 of the Genocide Convention," said Pannun.
"Seeking relief under Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) and Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA) in the US forms part of Sikh community's efforts to get justice in some form for the victims of the 1984 Sikh genocide," he said.
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