The World : Blame Fixed in India Riots

A report on India’s 1984 anti-Sikh riots said that police and low-ranking members of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress Party were partly to blame for the violence that took 2,700 lives. The outbreak followed the slaying of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two Sikh bodyguards on Oct. 31, 1984. But the report absolved the party itself and its leadership from responsibility for the worst upheaval since Hindu-Muslim riots in 1947, when the subcontinent was divided into predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The commission specifically named 19 Congress Party members as instigating rioting against Sikhs but said they acted on their own. Two have been acquitted and cases are pending against the other 17.