1984 riots survivors say they still await justice

As Gurjal Kaur, 75, stares blankly at the dirty, moldering wall of her house, her nightmarish memories of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots turn into fresh bleeding wounds.

With Punjab going to polls on Sunday, Congress leader Sam Pitroda's flippant remark that "1984 hua to hua" and the BJP's relentless offensive over it has brought the anti-Sikh riots back into the political discourse.

The survivors of the riots in the CRPF colony of Ludhiana claim that successive Congress governments delayed justice to the affected families.

Kaur, who lost two of her sons, Harbhajan Singh and Amarjit Singh, in the 1984 communal flare-up, claims the Akalis have helped the survivors of the riots the most and that the previous Congress governments at the Centre and in the state "ruined our lives".

Charanjeet Kaur, 59, who lost her two sons and husband in the riots, says, "We saw what people would not have seen during Partition. Mobs burnt thousands of Sikh men alive and raped the women."