Hyderabad: Jarnail Singh, a Sikh senior journalist, who shot to popularity after hurling a shoe at Union Home Minister P.Chidambaram over 1984 Anti-Sikh riots last year, wanted the Central Government to immediately take steps for time bound trial of culprits against Sikh riots and see that they are punished accordingly as per the law.

Jarnail Singh delivered a lecture here yesterday, 14 February.

"It is unfortunate that more than 25 years have passed and the culprits responsible of the riots in which over 3,000 innocent Sikhs were massacred and culprits are not punished, instead of being behind bars are moving freely'' he said.
Jarnail Singh told reporters said that if Congress leaders like Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler who are the main culprits and responsible for the massacre, are not punished, it will continue to be a blot on Indian democracy.

The hurling of his shoe was against the lack of ethics of Journalism but he said that although his method of protest may have been wrong, the issue is right.

He did it as a symbolic protest to show that he was dissatisfied with Chidamabaram's answer to a question on the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) clean chit to Congress leader Jagdish Tytler on the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre and added that he was upset that justice had not been done in the 1984 anti Sikh riots.

But only after this shoe throwing incident did Congress drop both Tytler and Sajjan Kumar as congress candidates from the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, he said.

He wanted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to visit the widows colony, to know the travails being faced by the Sikhs who were affected by the riots. "It was unfortunate that the Prime minister. being a Sikh, did not make any effort to visit the place," he said.

Recently, Jarnail Singh released his book on the subject titled:  I Accuse...The Anti-Sikh Violence of 1984.

"I wrote the book so that the culprits will feel ashamed. So society will wake up and hit them. After the incident, everyone talked about the death toll. But no one thought about the sufferings unleashed by these planned massacres."

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