Congress MP Sajjan Kumar
has resigned as the chairman
of the Rural Development Board
New Delhi, August 11, 2005
NDTV Correspondent
Congress MP Sajjan Kumar has resigned as the chairman
of the Rural Development Board, a post he held in the Delhi government.
Kumar is the second Congress MP to resign in the wake
of the tabling of Nanavati Commission report in Parliament.
Union Minister for NRI Affairs Jagdish Tytler resigned
last night.
Left unhappy
The Congress has been under immense pressure from the
opposition and its own allies to take action against those named by
the Nanavati Commission that investigated the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
The riot branch of the Delhi Police will re-investigate
the cases.
However, the Communist allies of Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh are not so pleased and are looking beyond the resignations.
Nilotpal Basu, a CPI M leader said, the government would
have to spell out how it would deal with Kumar and Tytler - to prove
the government has played a constructive role.
Sajjan Kumar Acquitted
in 1984 Sikh Massacres Case
New Delhi, Dec. 24, 2002
The Hindu,
"A Delhi court today acquitted the former Congress Member of Parliament
from Outer Delhi, Sajjan Kumar, and a former Congress M.L.A., Jaikishan,
in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case. With this, he has been acquitted in
all the three anti-Sikh riot cases registered against him following
an inquiry by a Judicial Commission. The riots broke out in the Capital
in the wake of the former Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi's assassination
on Oct. 31, 1984. Acquitting the Congress leader and 10 of his co-accused,
the Additional Sessions judge, Manju Goel, said: 'The prosecution (C.B.I.)
has miserably failed to prove the case against them.' There was no eyewitness
in the case and neither was the prosecution able to present an unbroken
chain of circumstantial evidence to make out a foolproof case. Fourteen
persons were accused in the case. Three of them died during the trial."
---
"Quoting a relevant paragraph of the statement recorded by Anwar
Kaur, based on which the Delhi Police had registered the case, Ms. Goel
said that Ms. Kaur was not sure whether Mr. Kumar was leading the mob
which lynched her husband, Nevin Singh, at Sultanpuri in West Delhi
on Nov. 1, 1984. Ms. Kaur had, in her statement, said that a mob instigated
by Mr. Kumar had killed her husband in front of her residence. 'The
mob set my house on fire, dragged my husband out and then the accused,
Nathu Pradhan and others, hit him with lathis [bamboo staffs] causing
his death. The mob then put my bedding on the body and set it ablaze,'
Ms. Kaur told the court."
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