BJP welcomes order on Tytler,attacks Cong

Welcoming the court order to re-open the case against Congress leader Jagdish Tytler,the BJP alleged here on Thursday that the ruling Congress had sought to cover up the complicity of its leaders in the 1984 anti-Sikh violence.

We welcome the court decision to re-open the case against Tytler,a permanent invitee to the Congress Working Committee, said BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman. Tytler,she pointed out,had contested the 2004 Lok Sabha polls on the Congress ticket. The violence in the aftermath of the assassination of Indira Gandhi,she alleged,had the support of the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi,who had rationalised it by arguing that earth shakes when a big tree falls.

The CBI was misused for filing a misleading report in the court,which allegedly led to the dismissal of the case against Tytler in the court of the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate earlier, she said. Many other Congress leaders,including the late HKL Bhagat,Dharam Das Shastri,Sajjan Kumar and Kamal Nath,according to her,had been accused of an involvement in the anti-Sikh violence.

Sitharaman said the Congress and members of the family had been silent on the issue,while Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,who belonged to the same community as the victims,had expressed a regret over the violence.