A US-based Sikh rights organization has asked the United Nations to investigate the killings of thousands of Sikhs in India following the 1984 assassination of the then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.

In a briefing to Special Adviser to the UN on the Prevention of Genocide in New York, Legal Adviser to Sikhs for Justice Gurpatwant Singh Pannun said systematic killings of a community fall under the 1948 Genocide Convention and world body cannot just ignore its own mandate.

Pannun said India has failed in its duty to hold the perpetrators of the killings to account, thus making a UN probe essential.