If the hyper secretive Congress president Sonia Gandhi indeed flew to the United States for a medical check up on September 2, after triumphantly securing passage of the disastrous Food Security Bill in both Houses of Parliament, the US federal court that summoned her on charges of shielding party leaders involved in inciting attacks on Sikhs in November 1984 should have no difficulty in serving the summons on her.

The news could not have come at a worse time for the UPA chairperson, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has left for the G-20 summit in St Petersburg, Russia, and the Congress is notoriously incapable of handling a public embarrassment of this dimension in her absence. Party vice president Rahul Gandhi will likely prove incapable of fielding media queries and working out the party line vis-à-vis the massacre of 4,733 Sikhs (2,733 in Delhi alone) after the murder of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

In Washington, it will be up to the Indian Embassy and personal loyalists possibly accompanying Sonia Gandhi to shield her from the summons. Certainly they will argue, with merit, that neither the Eastern District Court of New York, nor the US-based Sikhs for Justice, have any locus standi to take cognisance of, and demand justice for events internal to India.

Moreover, the diplomatic passport on which Sonia Gandhi would be travelling would protect her from answering the summons. But this stinging international slap in the face has instantly vaporised Sonia Gandhi’s stature as one of the world’s supposedly ‘most powerful women’. It has also neutralised the Congress’s euphoria over deputy inspector general of police DG Vanzara’s stinker against the Gujarat Government on September 3.

Coming amidst the countdown to the next general election, this unexpected development could well be Washington’s way of signalling that the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, where all prominent perpetrators from the ruling Congress (notably Kamal Nath, Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler) have successfully evaded justice for nearly three decades (HKL Bhagat and DD Shastri died without facing charges), eclipse the Gujarat riots of 2002, where cases are moving in court and some convictions have been made.

For the Bharatiya Janata Party, this should be a moment of immense sobriety, and not reckless triumphalism. The death of Indian citizens in riots – whether spontaneous or instigated – is unfortunate and the State has a duty to restore law and order as soon as possible and bring relief and succour to the victims.

Nor can the state condone custodial murder(s), whatever the provocation, as happened after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. This disgrace has been studiously ignored by all human rights activists, including PUCL and PUDR and several eminent jurists who have declaimed loudly on the issue of the anti-Sikh pogroms. Now, as there is no time bar in murder cases in Indian penal law, it is time justice is done and seen to be done.

Indira Gandhi was killed at her official residence — 1, Safdarjung Road, by two bodyguards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, who shot her with their official weapons. They then laid down their arms and surrendered. They were taken into custody by officers of the Indo Tibetan Border Police and confined to a room on the premises.

Suddenly, a few hours later, by secret command, the two assailants were gunned down in the confines of the small room, by officers of the ITBP. This was custodial murder, and naturally gave rise to conspiracy theories that the men were killed in order to prevent investigation into the conspiracy behind the murder. This was true to the extent that Beant Singh, who knew the entire chain of events behind the plot, died in the attack. The second assassin, Satwant Singh, survived, but could throw no light on the subject, beyond telling his interrogators that Mrs Gandhi was killed to avenge the desecration of Harmandir Saheb and the Akal Takht in ‘Operation Bluestar’ in June 1984. Satwant Singh was hanged in January 1989, along with another conspirator, Kehar Singh.

This premeditated decision to order the assassination of unarmed and surrendered men, in the custody of the Government of India, is probably without parallel anywhere in the world.

Even more disgraceful is the fact that even a token enquiry was not ordered into the incident. To this day, it is not known if there was an internal enquiry into at least the sequence of events that fateful day, the names of the men involved in the killing, and the name of the unknown person who gave the command for the ‘executions’. What is certain is that no punishment was meted out to the officers and men involved in the incident. It was a complete conspiracy of silence that no one has been willing to breach to this day.

The BJP should move the courts to issue notice on these custodial killings by the Indian state. This disgraceful crime should be recognised after all these years, and along with the Sikh victims of the carnage that followed the assassination of Indira, her killers too, should receive justice. It should be easy to reconstruct the crime because logs would be available of who was on duty at the Prime Minister’s house that day, and there will surely be survivors willing to clear their conscience after all these years.

The families of the two men are also entitled to compensation from the state. Indeed, this case should set the paradigm for how custodial killings are handled in India. If the ‘encounter killing’ of known bad guys can earn a compensation of Rs 10 lakh in a particular State, perhaps it is time for a uniform policy on the subject.

And at the very least, we must shame the professional human rights activists for their selective approach to crimes committed by authorities. The Government of India surely carries a higher responsibility than a State Government in upholding the rule of law. Yet it seems to have successfully conspired with loud-mouthed jholawalas to cover up one of the most scandalous killings in the history of independent India. They must all be shamed.