New Delhi: The leaders of Youth Akali Dal on Tuesday blackened the statue of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in Punjab’s Ludhiana over 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Demanding revocation of Bharat Ratna bestowed on the late PM, the workers used black spray paint to blacken the bust.
The Delhi Assembly had also recently passed a resolution demanding that Bharat Ratna awarded to Rajiv Gandhi be withdrawn over the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, which it termed as a “genocide”.
The House directed the government to impress upon the MHA that it should take all important and necessary steps to specifically include crimes against humanity and genocide in India’s domestic criminal laws, as recommended by the Delhi High Court in its landmark judgment sentencing Sajjan Kumar and other convicts to life imprisonment.
A former Congress MP, Sajjan Kumar, has quit the party following his conviction in a case related to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Rajiv Gandhi, who took over the reins of the party and the government following his mother’s demise, was posthumously awarded Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian award, in 1991.
