Reiterating that he was nobody to give clean chit to anyone including Jagdish Tytler as it was for the courts to decide, Capt Amarinder Singh today said that he had only stated what he had heard from the people immediately after the riots broke out in New Delhi after the assassination of Ms Indira Gandhi in 1984.He made it categorically clear that nobody had mentioned to him the name of Jagdish Tytler during his four days’ visit to riot victims and he has been saying it for the last thirty years. “It is not for the first time I have said so I have been saying it for the past 30 years, but why is it now that Akalis and BJP woke up and decided to protest?” he asked while adding, “for the obvious reasons they want to polarise people for petty political reasons as they are badly losing across Punjab, Amritsar in particular”.
Capt Amarinder said, the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 were the most tragic and gruesome and those responsible should be given exemplary punishment. “I, alongwith my brother and a cousin, besides a friend was the first person to reach out to the riot victims and I toured all the areas where the riots took place and went to all the Gurdwaras in Delhi where they had taken shelter between November 1 and 4, 1984 and nowhere was Mr Tytler’s name mentioned”, he said, while asking the Akalis as where were they when the innocent Sikhs were being brutally murdered in the streets of Delhi.The former Chief Minister stated that he had told the same thing to a private television channel that nobody mentioned Tytler’s name to him. He said, people had named HKL Bhagat, Dharam Dass Shastri, Arjan Dass, Lalit Maken and Sajjan Kumar.
“If I have no hesitation in mentioning the names of these Congress leaders why should I not disclose the name of Tytler if it was mentioned to me”, he asked, while adding, “I will only speak what I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears whether Akais and BJP are able to digest it or not”.Referring to the protests staged by the Akali and BJP workers, Capt Amarinder said, it showed their frustration as they are not able to generate any momentum in Punjab. Their rallies in Amritsar are failing and getting cancelled and now they are trying to resort to emotive issues. “They have always opened the old wounds of people for their petty partisan interests and they are doing it now”, he asserted, adding, “my naming or not naming someone is immaterial as the matter is under investigation and will be decided by the courts”.