‘Will not contest 2019 polls’: Sushma calls it quits
Union minister of external affairs Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday said she would not be contesting the 2019 Lok Sabha polls due to health reasons. Swaraj had undergone a kidney transplant in December 2016 and has since then vastly reduced her political engagements outside the national capital.
Swaraj, 66, announced her decision at a media interaction in Indore. “It is the party which will take its decision (on candidature) but I have made up my mind that I will not contest the next Lok Sabha election,” she said.
Swaraj told reporters that she already conveyed her decision to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
BHOPAL:
Delhi court on Tuesday handed down the first death sentence in connection with the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 that left nearly 3,000 dead following the assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Relatives of victims rejoiced in the capital after the judge announced the verdict, the first since a Special Investigation Team took over the probe in 2015.
Additional Sessions Judge Ajay Pandey awarded the death sentence on Tuesday to Yashpal Singh and a life sentence to Naresh Sherawat, both for murder, rioting and other charges.
The duo were convicted last week of killing Hardev Singh and Avtar Singh, two men in their 20s, in south Delhi’s Mahipalpur during the riots.
Police had closed the case against the two in 1994 citing lack of evidence but it was reopened by the Special Investigation Team that was formed in 2015. The team is probing some 60 cases it has reopened, out a total 293.
The verdict was pronounced in Delhi’s high-security Tihar Jail due to security concerns after an attack last week on the convicts on the premises of the Delhi court.
Emotional relatives said they were relieved that “justice has been finally served” and hoped that next up would be two former Congress ministers, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Singh.
The 1984 carnage erupted just hours after the then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot dead by her Sikh bodyguards. It lasted three days with thousands of Sikhs raped and murdered, their homes and businesses torched.
The violence across the country but mostly in New Delhi saw people dragged from their homes and burned alive.
Few have been brought to justice over the massacre, with government-appointed commissions in the past failing to prosecute more than a handful of minor cases. Sikh leaders say the death toll far exceeds the official figure of nearly 3,000.
Indira Gandhi was shot dead after ordering troops to storm the Golden Temple in Amritsar in an operation against militants holed up there.
NEWDELHI:A