Senior advocate H.S. Phoolka, who has taken up the legal battle on behalf of the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, has demanded that the house on Dr. Rajendra Prasad Road where Union Minister Ram Vilas Pawan stayed as an MP be converted into a memorial for the victims.
House No. 12 on Dr. Rajendra Prasad Road in Lutyens’ Delhi was burnt during the violence as Mr. Paswan gave shelter to a Sikh there.
“Mr. Paswan managed to escape by scaling a wall in the house, but the old Sikh man was caught and burnt alive along with the house,” Mr. Phoolka said in a letter addressed to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh.
Though a memorial is being built by the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee within the premises of Gurdwara Rakab Ganj, it cannot be a substitute for a memorial that needs to be constructed by the government, he said.
He pointed out that all the constituents of the National Democratic Alliance, including the BJP and Akali Dal, had supported the issue of building a memorial when they were in Opposition. “This is an opportunity for the government to give respect to the innocent citizens who were killed for no fault of theirs.”
