 Hello and welcome to Newsflick. We usually bring you a roundup of various protests and movements that have taken place across the country over past few weeks. But in this segment, we'll also talk about a protest that has been ongoing for over three decades and will continue to until these wounds are addressed in the court of law. I'm talking about the protest for justice for the 1984 Sikh riots. Judgment, the Delhi High Court, has today declared Congress leader, Sajjan Kumar, guilty in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and he has been sentenced to life. The Congress leader was convicted for criminal conspiracy, promoting enmity and acts against communal harmony. Besides Sajjan Kumar, Captain Bhagmal, Girdhari Lal and former Congress councillor Balwan Khokhar have been sentenced to life imprisonment. At least 3,000 people were killed when mobs led by some Congress leaders targeted Sikhs after the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. While many witnesses and survivors gave accounts of some of the Congress leaders inciting and meeting mobs on the streets of Delhi, Sajjan Kumar, a former MP, is the first top leader of the party to be convicted. The order coincided with a big day for the Congress when it takes over in three big states after its election victories in the last week. What began initially as an angry outburst in the aftermath of the then Prime Minister's assassination soon turned into an organized carnage. 34 years ago, riots broke out. The scenes of burning streets, mass massacres and trains, screaming children and wailing mothers turned the country into a battlefield. Reminiscent of the partition days of 1947. In no time, the nation was engulfed in draught, agony and terror which took the country to an abyss. The miscarriage of justice began with the dismissal of the Marwa Commission which was appointed in the aftermath of the massacre. Subsequently, many inquiry commissions were created and closed. Shockingly, the Ranganath Mishra Commission recorded statements in private in the absence of the victims and absorbed Rajiv Gandhi's government of responsibility. In 1994, the case was closed by Delhi police for want of evidence. In an attempt to bring justice, the Vajpayee government instituted the Nanavati Commission in 2000. This report made public a lot of material that was shocking wherein powerful leaders from the Congress party were named. Some of them like H.K.L. Bhagat has since died without facing trial. Whereas others like Sajjan Kumar, Jagdish Titler and Kamal Nath have gone scot-free until today. The call for justice for one of the largest persecutions in India's post-colonial history was finally heard. The voices of victims and eyewitnesses in long-winded judicial processes which was almost retired in exhaustion were reawakened by the recent Delhi Court judgement. On December 14, over 4,000 workers gathered at the Jubbasani Park in Muzaffarpur, Bihar in a democratic and peaceful attempt to resist the continued harassment that is being faced by the members of Samaj Parivartan Shakti Sangatan or SPSS, also known as the Manrega Watch. Workers and people from various national campaigns from Bihar and other states express solidarity with the workers. To give you a background, the SPSS was formed when Sanjay Sahani, a Class 7 dropout who was once an electrician in Southwest Delhi, decided to expose the corruption in Manrega Works in his panchayat. Since then, SPSS has become a non-violent people's movement with a collective of more than 50,000 workers, consisting mainly of Dalit women who are fighting for their rights and against corruption. Muzaffarpur has seen a distressing downward trend in the implementation of the social security schemes. A shockingly large amount of payments, nearly 636 crore rupees, is pending, which was to be made by the state government towards wage and material costs. In the district, only 94 households have managed to avail the 100 days of work that they are entitled to. On October 31st, the students of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, or more popularly known as TIS, in Hyderabad discovered via a newspaper advertisement that the BA Social Sciences course has been removed from the next year for an unspecified period of time. This is absolutely bizarre seeing how the university has the term social sciences in its name. Furthermore, it was implied that the campus would be non-residential from 2019, meaning there would be no more hostels. When no accountability or transparency was forthcoming from the administration, the Student Council of 2018 and 2019 decided to go for a fee boycott, wherein the students would not pay the fees for the next semester until they were provided with clarifications. The Student Action Committee met the administration. It was mentioned that the existing batches would be provided with hostel accommodation. However, the students have to micromanage the process of accommodation by contacting the vendors and the institute would support them. In other words, the students would have to look for their own accommodation. Till now, there was a service provider for hostels. It was selected by the management through tenders. Now that it will be non-residential, no more tenders will be invited. This will not take any responsibility for accommodation of students. Food, safety, security and hygiene will all now be at stake. It is important to understand how grave an attack this is on the higher education system. Students coming from distant villages and towns have their education and future plans at stake. Education is a basic right and it is not isolated from other aspects which help the student grow. Providing a comfortable and secure accommodation will unburden the students and help them focus on learning. The absolute disregard of students' demands has resulted in a decision for the protest to take a further step. About 100 students have decided to stay back on campus and remain there till the concerned authorities address them. Radhika Vemula, Rohit Vemula's mother has also joined the students in their cause. Government clearly doesn't want us to get educated. They want literacy rates on the paper but they don't want us to get educated because if everybody starts questioning them they don't have a standing. We stand in solidarity with the people's movements. Our teams are on the ground covering these movements extensively and hoping to bring out a change. To follow detailed reports on these protests and movements, please visit our website and our Facebook page. That's all for this week. Thank you.