H. K. L. Bhagat

H. K. L. Bhagat was a Congress leader who dominated the party in Delhi in the 1970s and 1980s, sat in Parliament for Delhi, and served as a Union minister. In its 2005 report the Nanavati Commission named him among the Congress leaders against whom it found credible material of a part in the November 1984 pogrom of Sikhs in Delhi. He was acquitted in the cases brought against him and died in October 2005 without a conviction.

The Tribune's obituary says he was born in 1921 in Montgomery, now in Pakistan, and moved to Delhi in 1947. He was a close associate of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, served as Deputy Mayor of Delhi and chief whip of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee, and was its president from 1972 until May 1983. He was elected to Parliament from Delhi in 1971 and 1980. Wikipedia lists him as Union minister for information and broadcasting from February 1983 to December 1984, then minister for parliamentary affairs until December 1989.

The record on 1984

• He faced trial in two cases, said The Tribune in February 2005, and was acquitted when key witnesses turned hostile. His obituary counts three acquittals in cases relating to 1984.
• The Nanavati Commission issued him a notice under section 8B. The commission's annexure records the reply as: "Not able to reply. Medical produced." The Tribune said he refused to appear before the commission on health grounds.
• In its report, tabled in August 2005, the commission said there was credible material against Congress leaders and workers including Bhagat, and that they were very probably also involved. It recommended no further action against them, because they had been acquitted in criminal cases and, in Bhagat's case, in view of his physical and mental condition. His son had filed an affidavit saying he had dementia, and said Bhagat had been made a scapegoat by the Congress.
• He died in a Delhi hospital on 29 October 2005, aged 84, after about a year and a half in hospital with Alzheimer's disease. The Tribune said he never fully shook off the stigma of allegations that he had led mobs after Indira Gandhi's assassination.

The sources differ on the day of death: Wikipedia's box gives 21 October and its text 29 October, while the Tribune report is datelined 29 October.