On the eve of former prime minister Indira Gandhi's birth anniversary on Thursday, Sikh leaders of the BJP and AAP released an old video of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi justifying the anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi.
In the video, he can be seen saying “when a big tree falls, the earth shakes”.
The video was released by AAP leader and advocate H S Phoolka and BJP leader R P Singh during a press conference in Delhi.
Claiming that it was very difficult to get their hands on the video as it was deleted from the archives of Doordarshan, they also demanded that Rajiv Gandhi's Bharat Ratna be withdrawn.
“A Prime Minister who justifies the killing of innocent citizens, definitely does not deserve Bharat Ratna. We therefore call upon the government to withdraw the Bharat Ratna conferred upon Rajiv Gandhi. A Prime Minister who takes three years even to count the dead bodies of innocent citizens killed in open broad daylight in the capital, a Prime Minister whose party was responsible for a massacre, cannot be a Bharat Ratna. We demand Rajiv Gandhi’s Bharat Ratna’s be taken back,”
The Indian Express quotes H S Phoolka as saying.