The BJP on Wednesday resurrected the 1984 anti-Sikh riots to slam the Congress and accuse the rival of deliberately blocking fair investigation and trial, picking on a Delhi court’s judgment handing the death sentence and a life term to two convicts.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley came up with a lengthy write-up and the BJP fielded law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to address the media to accuse the Congress of burying riot cases and take credit for the convictions by a Delhi court on Tuesday. The party pointed out that the conviction was the result of the Special Investigation Team constituted by the Narendra Modi government in 2015.

“Yesterday justice has been done in one case where two accused have been punished, one with life sentence and the other with death sentence. There are thousands of such cases which required a similar punishment in the 1980s itself. The period from 1984 to 1998 was one of cover-up where all cases were buried as though the 1984 genocide had not happened,” Jaitley said in an article that he posted on Facebook.

Prasad accused former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of justifying the killings of Sikhs with his statement that “when a big banyan tree falls, the earth shakes”.

“Congress till date hasn’t disassociated itself from this statement of Rajiv Gandhi. Now, the Congress should clarify whether it holds Rajiv Gandhi’s statement right,” Prasad said.

The minister claimed that available evidence clearly shows that the Congress ensured in the last 35 years that no fair investigation or trial should be allowed to take place against the culprits of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

“Can the Congress to cite one instance to show that the party tried to give justice to the victims of the riots?” he asked.

Jaitley referred to Operation Bluestar and said the assassination of Indira Gandhi was a “direct fallout of the disastrous operation in June 1984 at the Golden Temple”.

He accused previous Congress governments of not only protecting the culprits but even rewarding them with berths in Parliament and the Union ministry.

Prasad took the names of many commissions of inquiry formed by Congress governments in the past and alleged that none of them were allowed to deliver justice to the victims’ families. In this context, the law minister even named former Chief Justice of India Ranganath Mishra and alleged that he was rewarded with a Rajya Sabha berth because the inquiry commission headed by him said the anti-Sikh riots were “not an organised crime”.

“Ranganath Mishra is no more and it is painful to recall how the Congress rewarded him with a Rajya Sabha berth after he retired in the early nineties,” the law minister said. “Exonerate and get rewarded,” he added.

Prasad said the Modi government was committed to give justice to the Sikh families who suffered during the riots.

Asked about the Gujarat riots of 2002, Prasad claimed there was proper probe in the cases. He said that the then chief minister and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi was interrogated by the SIT for 3 days and no evidence was found against him.

People shouldn’t use the Gujarat riots to justify the anti-Sikh riots, he said, and added that all riots are wrong.