Dharam Dass Shastri

Dharam Dass Shastri was a Congress (I) member of Parliament at the time of the November 1984 Ghallughara, the killings of Sikhs in Delhi after Indira Gandhi's assassination. The Nanavati Commission calls him "a Congress (I) MP at the relevant time" and a Congress leader of the locality, and Wikipedia shows him winning the Karol Bagh seat in 1980; another Congress candidate won it at the next election, in December 1984. He is in this record as a named politician in the Commission's report. The statements below are findings and allegations that he denied, and no court convicted him.

Key moments

• 1 November 1984: the Nanavati Commission records that witnesses said Shastri instigated Tek Chand Sharma and Rajinder Singh, who then organised an attack on the house of Avtar Singh. It found that there was "credible evidence" against him. A written complaint about this was given to the police on 1 November, but no offence was registered until 28 November 1984.
• 5 November 1984: according to the Commission he went to Karol Bagh police station with some municipal councillors and about 3,000 people to seek the release of those arrested for looting or holding looted goods. The Commission records that he condemned the police for the arrests and that officers were threatened with dire consequences if they acted against people holding looted property. It accepted the witnesses' version for want of a better explanation from him.
• His reply: Shastri denied the allegations. The Commission did not treat his denial as enough, and recommended that the Government examine the material and direct investigation or further investigation as needed. That is a referral, not a finding of guilt.
• An eyewitness account: the journalist Shekhar Gupta wrote in ThePrint that he saw Shastri protest at Karol Bagh police station against the arrest of Congressmen caught with property looted from Sikh homes, arguing that the property should be recovered but the men not arrested because they were "not criminals".
• 1993 and 2005: ThePrint reports that the Jain-Aggarwal committee recommended registering a case against him in 1993, that the Nanavati Commission found credible evidence in 2005, and that the Union home ministry then ordered the CBI to reopen the case, which came to nothing. He has since died.

Other accounts: Lionel Baixas, in a Sciences Po study, lists Shastri among the Congress officials accused in survivors' affidavits of leading mobs, and says the Commission issued notices to him, H K L Bhagat and Kamal Nath.

Remembered for: being one of the Congress leaders whom survivors and the Nanavati Commission named, and for the long gap between those findings and any prosecution.