By IANS
New Delhi : The All India Sikh Conference (Babbar) Monday urged the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director Vijay Shanker to replace the team probing the 1984 anti-Sikh riots involving former union minister and Congress leader Jagdish Tytler.
One of the witnesses, Gurcharan Singh Babbar, threatened not to depose if the organisation’s demands were not met.
“I was served a notice a few days ago under section 160 of CrPc to give a statement and dossier before the present investigating team, which is deeply involved in hatching a plot for defending Tytler, on Jan 24,” said Babbar, who is also president of the All India Sikh Conference faction.
“I have written a letter to the CBI director that I wouldn’t comply with the notice until he replaced Additional Superintendent of Police Manoj Pangarkar and his team, which has hushed up the matter by filing a closure report to save Tytler under political pressure,” Babbar told reporters.
Babbar stressed that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should provide an explanation to the Sikh community about the investigating agency’s manner of operation.
“How can we believe the agency that has taken an enormous time to trace Jasbir Singh, a key witness in the case, who had actually seen Tytler ordering his men to slaughter Sikhs during the carnage?” he asked.
The California-based Jasbir Singh, who was earlier declared non-traceable by the CBI, filed a petition last week through his son seeking to quash a CBI notice asking him to come to India and give his statement on the riots.
Sate Singh, father of Jasbir Singh, said: “The agency never contacted him and rest of the family to record our statement or version. They said we are untraceable and couldn’t be contacted.”
“We want the agency to video record Jasbir’s statement as he is facing life threats from Tytler’s goons in India,” Sate Singh said.
Singh, in an affidavit before the Nanavati Commission, which investigated the anti-Sikh riots, stated that Nov 3, 1984 he had overheard Tytler rebuking his men for “only” nominal killing of Sikhs in his constituency.