NEW DELHI, Aug 9: Indian Sikhs protested on Tuesday against what they charged was an inquiry commission whitewash of Congress leaders accused of orchestrating and participating in deadly 1984 anti-Sikh riots. “We want justice, we want justice. (Those responsible) should be hanged,” widows and other relatives of some of the riot victims shouted near parliament.

The issue also rocked parliament as both upper and lower houses were adjourned for the day after opposition parties demanded the prime minister’s resignation.

“This report was adopted by the cabinet under the chairmanship of the prime minister who is himself a Sikh. Didn’t his hands shake when he signed it?” said Vijay Kumar Malhotra, a senior leader of the main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

Nearly 3,000 Sikhs were massacred in New Delhi and other parts of the country in riots that broke out after the assassination of former Congress prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.

Several Congress leaders have been accused by witnesses as leading mobs of party workers and others who hunted down Sikhs and bludgeoned them to death or burnt them alive.

On Monday, a five-year-old commission of inquiry said Jagdish Tytler, a junior minister in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet, was ‘very probably’ involved in organizing the riots and recommended taking steps against him.

However, the government ruled out any action, saying he cannot be prosecuted on the basis of probability.

Tytler has denied any role and said he is willing to face any inquiry.

Incensed Sikhs, who lost family members in what was one of India’s worst outbreaks of communal carnage, collected near parliament and also outside Tytler’s residence, demanding his resignation from the cabinet and legal action.—AFP