Amarinder's remark insult to anti-Sikh riot victims: Phoolka

Noted lawyer and crusader for justice to anti-Sikh riots' victims H S Phoolka today said Congress leader Amarinder Singh's remark against him was an insult to the victims of the 1984 carnage.
Phoolka also charged the former Punjab Chief Minister with speaking in favour of anti-Sikh riots accused Jagdish Tytler and Kamal Nath in order to grab the post of Punjab Congress President.
"Amarinder has leveled an allegation against me that I have been making false statements pertaining to 1984 riots to grab the headlines in newspapers. By saying so, Amarinder has insulted the victims of anti-Sikh riots," Phoolka said while addressing media today.

"Before making such allegations, you must have thought about the victims who have been fighting their cases for so long," said Phoolka, who had resigned from all posts held in Aam Aadmi Party in September but remains a member.
On November 19, Phoolka had demanded that former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi be stripped of Bharat Ratna award as he had "justified" the killings in the over three-decade old riots.
Rejecting the charge, Amarinder had said he did not take his demands seriously. "He (Phoolka) has been raising such things to get in the news for the last 31 years," Amarinder had said.

Phoolka alleged that Amarinder in an interview to a newspaper in May 2010 had said that Jagdish Tytler and Kamal Nath were wrongly implicated in anti-Sikh riot case.

"A leader like you, who became Chief Minister, MLA... Does not have the time to meet the victims of anti-sikh riots and is giving clean chit to Jagdish Tytler and Kamal Nath (in anti-Sikh riot cases) just to get the post of PPCC Chief," he said.
He also asked Amarinder to prove that a video of Rajiv Gandhi's speech delivered on November 19, 1984 at Boat Club on Indira Gandhi's birth anniversary was not authentic.

In the video grab which was shown to media here today, Gandhi was purportedly seen saying: "when the big tree falls, the earth shakes", an apparent reference to the anti-Sikh riots.
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Meanwhile, Congress has rejected H S Phoolka's charges against Amarinder Singh, saying the former Chief Minister did not need any certificate from anybody "much less people like him (Phoolka)" to justify his credentials in watching the interests of Punjab including the Sikh community.
In a joint statement senior party leaders and legislators including Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Rana Gurjeet Singh, Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa and Kewal Singh Dhillon asserted that Amarinder's credentials were too strong to need any clarification from anyone.

They also strongly denied that he was trying to shield anyone involved in the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 in the aftermath of the assassination of Indira Gandhi.
"Capt Amarinder has already revealed the names of those, he was told by the riot victims themselves, were involved in the killings," the joint statement said.
Congress leaders maintained that having been rejected by the AAP for his chief ministerial ambitions, Phoolka was now trying to warm up to the BJP and had started levelling baseless charges against Amarinder.
"We would advise you to search something else for your political survival than levelling baseless charges against Capt Amarinder as nobody was going to buy these," they said.

However, they asked Phoolka as to what prompted him to wake up to level these charges against Amarinder now. "Why have you been silent so far and why have you changed your direction from earlier targeting the Badals to Capt Amarinder now?" they asked, while hinting that Phoolka was cozying up to the BJP and in turn to the Badals.
The Congress legislators alleged that Phoolka had fallen into the BJP hands now and they were using him to level baseless allegations against Amarinder as they had nothing else to speak against him.
They asked him as to why he was silent over the role of RSS as over 100 workers were named in the FIRs for their involvement in the anti-Sikh riots.