Author Topic: CARNAGE 84..... PLZ READ IT AND IF U HAVE INFORMATION BOUT IT POST IT HERE (Read 3638 times)

Tezy_Sandhu · « **on:** June 01, 2009, 03:55:54 PM »

Every time there is a law and order outrage, there is inevitably a demand for a judicial inquiry. That is, an inquiry in addition to the regular police investigation. Those who demand such an inquiry feel the police cannot be trusted to do a proper investigation either because they are very much a part of the administration or because their own role is under question. The Government often has its own motive for acceding to the inquiry demand: To defuse the tension and avert further problems. Thus, there have been hundreds of judicial inquiries around the country especially since a law was enacted for that purpose way back in 1952.

The subjects of inquiry have been varied. They have ranged from police brutalities and Emergency excesses to political assassinations and communal riots. Each of such issues has been deemed to be a “definite matter of public importance,” the sole criterion laid down by the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952. But in terms of sheer intensity of violence, the number of people murdered, none of those matters can compare with the massacre of some 4,000 Sikhs in Delhi over three days in 1984. The official death toll announced three years after the massacre was 2,733. Since the Partition riots of 1947, there has not been a single carnage anywhere in India on the scale seen in 1984, ironically right in its Capital.

Therefore, it would seem, there has been no fitter case for inquiry than the Delhi massacre. Yet, it took a long time for the Government to accede to the inquiry demand. Almost six months. Though the massacre took place in the first three days of November 1984, the inquiry was appointed only on April 26, 1985. The Government was however prompt in ordering an inquiry into Indira Gandhi’s assassination, which had triggered the massacre. It took just four days to announce a judicial inquiry into the assassination. Why did the Government not show the same kind of urgency about the massacre of 4,000 Sikhs? Why the distinction at the same time between the murder of one and the murder of many? Was there not enough pressure on the Government to hold an inquiry into the massacre as well? No, the victims, Opposition parties, Sikh organisations, newspapers and human rights groups did clamour for an inquiry again and again.

But then the problem for the newly formed Rajiv Gandhi Government was that a lot of those very people were equally vehement in alleging that the massacre had been organised by leaders of the ruling Congress party. On November 9, Atal Behari Vajpayee, who was then the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is the main rival to Congress in the local politics of Delhi, said that the disturbances were “in the main engineered violence and the Congressmen are squarely responsible for this.” Deploring the Government’s failure to accede to the “near unanimous demand” for a judicial inquiry, he said he regarded it as “the Government’s guilty conscience and an eagerness to shove its own sins beneath the carpet.”

While the Government ignored Vajpayee’s charge, the Congress party counter-attacked by saying, “Who is not aware of the anti-minority bias of parties like the BJP? No right thinking person can be taken in by their false and misleading propaganda.” Given such protestations of innocence, one would have expected Rajiv to seize the opportunity of a judicial inquiry to clear, if nothing else, the name of his party and government. If he did no such thing, was it because Rajiv actually had so much to hide that he would rather bear the stigma of suspicion than risk a judicial inquiry, while the wounds were still so fresh and the evidence so much easier to find? Or, was it simply that he was pandering to the wrath of those Hindus who saw the massacre as a richly deserved lesson to the Sikhs.

Whatever his motive, Rajiv could at that stage disregard the allegations of political complicity because they were yet to be supported by details such as the names of the leaders and the nature of their alleged involvement. The only name that came out in the press initially was of a Congress MP from Delhi, Dharam Das Shastri, who was reported to have led a mob to a police station on November 5 and berated the officers for arresting some rioters. Shastri’s gratuitous concern for the miscreants fitted in, on the face of it, with the allegation that Congress leaders had organised the violence. A delegation of Opposition leaders highlighted Shastri’s indiscretion the next day in their joint memorandum to Rajiv, who refused however to see it as anything but an isolated incident of political involvement.

An overall account of the role played by politicians came out for the first time on November 15 when two human rights organisations, People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) and People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), published a joint report entitled, Who are the guilty? More significantly, it named the Congress leaders who had apparently been identified by victims and witnesses as organisers of the riots. The report created a sensation alright but only momentarily. That’s because the Government had by then called the Lok Sabha elections, drowning out the commotion over the inquiry demand.

The poll was fixed for December 27, a fortnight ahead of the due date. The election announcement made on November 13 put paid to any chances of an inquiry being ordered till at least the electoral process was completed. But, in the run-up to the elections, Rajiv had to explain his stand on the massacre and the inquiry demand on more than one occasion. Except that he kept taking varying and often conflicting positions.

First, he provided a rationale to the massacre which made the inquiry demand sound rather misplaced. It was that famous comparison he made of the massacre with the impact of a big tree falling on the earth. The official translation of his Hindi speech on Indira Gandhi’s birth anniversary says: “Some riots took place in the country following the murder of Indiraji. We know the people were very angry and for a few days it seemed that India had been shaken. But, when a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it does shake a little.” In other words, he was plugging the line that the three-day massacre in Delhi of 4,000 Sikhs was entirely a spontaneous reaction of the mourners.

But in the course of his election campaigning, Rajiv gave another spin to the massacre. He repeatedly said that the motive behind Indira’s assassination was to provoke widespread communal violence as part of a grand design to break up the country. The implication being that the perpetrators of the communal violence were themselves victims of a conspiracy as much as the Sikhs they massacred were. Though Rajiv was in effect attributing the assassination and the consequent massacre to a common conspiracy, the terms of reference of the Justice M.P. Thakkar commission set up by him to unravel the conspiracy behind the assassination made no reference whatsoever to the massacre.

In his interaction with the press during the electioneering, Rajiv took yet another position whenever he was asked about the inquiry demanded into the alleged involvement of his party leaders in the Delhi massacre. Recalling the meeting he had with the Opposition leaders on November 6, he said they could name only one leader and he took action on that basis. The leader Rajiv was referring to was none other than Dharam Das Shastri and the action taken against him was that he was not renominated as a Congress candidate in the election. The implication of Rajiv’s reply to the press was: since he had denied the Congress ticket to Shastri, there was no more any need for a judicial inquiry into the massacre.

However untenable and inconsistent his reasoning might have been, Rajiv’s evasion of the inquiry turned out to be in tune with the popular mood in the election, held as it was under the shadow of Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the massacre of Sikhs. Thanks to the overwhelming mandate he received from the electorate (more than 90 per cent of the seats in the Lok Sabha), Rajiv’s insensitivity to the riot victims seemed to have turned into contempt for them. The customary condolence motions passed by the new Lok Sabha referred to Indira Gandhi and even the victims of the Bhopal industrial disaster that took place in December 1984. But those killed in the massacre that followed Indira’s assassination were conspicuously overlooked. It was as though Rajiv wanted to avoid any gesture that might have been construed to legitimise the inquiry demand.

In an interview to India Today in January 1985, he said the inquiry would not help as it would only rake up “issues that are really dead.” That was a singularly unkind metaphor. He had never before been so derisive of the inquiry demand nor so dismissive of the value of an independent probe into the massacre. As if that was not bad enough, Rajiv went on to give a sinister twist to the inquiry demand in an interview to Sunday magazine around the same time. He said an inquiry was not being instituted as “it would do more damage to the Sikhs, it would do more damage to the country by specifically opening this whole thing up again.” It sounded as though he was giving a veiled threat to the victims that they could get into worse trouble if they pressed for an inquiry.

For all the vehemence with which he ruled out the inquiry, Rajiv soon had to eat his words due to his administrative compulsion. He had won the election positioning himself as the best bet to save the country from being consumed by the raging Punjab militancy. As a natural corollary, he declared right after the election that his “top priority” was to settle the Punjab problem at the earliest. The key to that problem lay in opening a dialogue with the Akali Dal leaders who had been in detention since the crackdown that followed Operation Bluestar in June 1984. The Government released them from detention but found that they were unwilling to deal with it. The Akali leaders refused to talk with the Government until it proved its bona fides by setting up a judicial inquiry into the 1984 massacre.

Rajiv no doubt found it difficult to consider that pre-condition because of his avowed policy of shunning the inquiry. Besides, the no-inquiry policy was an important part of the winning formula in the December 1984 Lok Sabha election. He was under pressure to leave that formula undisturbed for the assembly elections in several states barely three months later. It was after all vital for the new Prime Minister to show that his maiden triumph was no fluke and that he still commanded popular support.

Thus, only after he tided over the assembly elections in March 1985, did Rajiv allow his administrative exigency to take precedence over his political posture. The first indication came when he sent a Cabinet panel at that stage to Punjab where his home minister, S.B. Chavan, declared that the inquiry could well be considered as part of a package settlement. But as the Akalis maintained that the inquiry would have to be appointed before the talks on the Punjab problem, Rajiv petulantly asked in an interview to Frontline in April 1985: “Well, there is something basically wrong here, because isn’t that what we are going to talk about? If it’s already done before we talk, then what are we talking about?” He was eager to talk about the inquiry with the Akali leaders because, as he put it then to the British publication Observer, “we would like them to come forward and say exactly what they want now.”

The politician in Rajiv had dismissed the inquiry demand outright just a few weeks earlier saying it would only rake up dead issues and do more damage to the Sikhs and the country. The administrator in him was now trying to use the inquiry issue as a bargaining counter in the negotiations he proposed to have with the Akali leaders for an accord on Punjab. There was however a stalemate as the Akalis refused to talk until the inquiry was appointed. They sought to exert pressure on the Government by threatening to launch a major agitation on April 13, the anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The Government gave in just two days before the threatened agitation when Chavan announced in Parliament a package of measures to “restore normalcy in Punjab.” One was the release of some more Sikh detainees and another was the lifting of the ban on a militant Sikh student organisation. The third and the most important measure announced in that context was the decision to hold a judicial inquiry into the Delhi massacre.

Thus, the Rajiv Gandhi Government made no bones about the fact that the inquiry demand was finally conceded merely to clear the way to an accord on Punjab with the Akali Dal. There was no pretence whatsoever that it had suddenly found the inquiry demand to be just. But then, strictly speaking, the Government’s attitude should not matter any longer once an inquiry commission is appointed. The inquiry takes its own course regardless of what anybody feels. Its job is to find facts and make recommendations. The commission enjoys as much independence from the executive as the court does. The Government can have its way only after the commission is done with the inquiry. The Government has the discretion to accept or reject the commission’s findings and recommendations. Given the moral weight of a report written by a judge after due inquiry, the Government is generally hard pressed to justify any disagreement with the Commission.

The Rajiv Gandhi Government did not however face any such embarrassment on account of the inquiry report on the 1984 massacre. Although it found that “a number of people belonging to the Congress (I) party at the lower level had participated in the riots,” the report absolved the party leaders of the allegation of organising the massacre. The Commission headed by a serving Supreme Court judge, Ranganath Misra, did however confirm some other serious allegations: that for three whole days the mobs had a free run of the place murdering, looting and raping hundreds of Sikhs; that the administration in the Capital had all but collapsed; that the police either looked the other side or joined the mobs; that there was an undue delay in imposing the curfew as well as in calling the army; that the pattern of violence indicated that it was organised; that the police either refused to entertain the complaints of the victims or registered them only after deleting the names of influential people; that the police and the rioters harassed the victims even during the inquiry to prevent them from deposing before it. Yet, the Misra Commission held that the culprits in the Congress party behind the massacre were only workers and not leaders.

How did the Commission come up with such a finding in the face of all those facts suggesting otherwise? How did it reconcile the blanket exoneration of the Congress leaders with, say, the controversy over Congress MP Dharam Das Shastri who allegedly stormed a police station with a mob to secure the release of other rioters? What could the Congress party have deposed in its defence which made the Commission dissociate the leaders from the workers? What was that strong evidence which convinced Misra that the party workers were more likely to have acted on their own, without any instigation or organisation from their leaders? What exactly did the leaders and the workers say about each other during their cross-examination? What action did the party show to have taken against the delinquent workers and did it assume moral responsibility for their crimes?

The answers to these questions should logically have figured in the inquiry report on “the allegations in regard to the incidents of organised violence.” Equally obvious, no such inquiry could have been completed without the participation of the very people who were alleged to have organised the violence. Namely, the Congress leaders and workers identified by the victims in their affidavits before the Commission. The leaders included H.K.L. Bhagat, who was a minister in the Rajiv Gandhi Government, and Sajjan Kumar and Dharam Das Shastri, former Congress MPs, and several Delhi legislators. But, as it happened, Misra did not throughout the inquiry call any of those Congress members nor for that matter any representative of the party.

Misra’s failure to put a single political leader through the wringer of cross examination contrasts with the conduct of other inquiries held into similar issues. Take the case of the B.N. Srikrishna Commission which inquired into the Bombay riots of 1992-93 in the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition. The Srikrishna Commission on its own initiative put in the witness box Shiv Sena leader Manohar Joshi, who had by then become chief minister of Maharashtra, and Congress leaders, Sudhakar Naik and Sharad Pawar, who were at the time of the riots Maharashtra chief minister and Union defence minister, respectively.

Far from asserting his power to call anybody as a witness, Misra went out of his way to keep the Congress members out of the proceedings even at the cost of violating the law. Section 8-B of the Commissions of Inquiry Act stipulates that the Commission cannot probe the conduct of any person without giving him an opportunity to be heard and to defend himself. The allegations made by the victims were very much about the conduct of the Congress members. Misra should therefore have given them an opportunity to defend themselves by issuing Section 8-B notices to them. None of the Congress members however objected to his failure to do so. The fact that they forsook their right to defend themselves implied two things. One, they feared they would only be exposed further when cross examined by the lawyers of the victims. Two, they had the confidence or foreknowledge that Misra would somehow vindicate them even in the absence of their defence.

Thus, by shielding the Congress members from his own proceedings, Misra has clearly engaged in a fix-it inquiry. Nevertheless, he had to find some other way of countering all those nasty affidavits from the victims. He did so in his own freewheeling manner with the testimony of a third party. Namely, those who filed, as Misra himself put it, “affidavits against the victims.” It was odd enough that any affidavit should have been filed at all against the Sikhs in the context of their own massacre. Not only were such affidavits filed but they also outnumbered those in support of the victims by as many as four times.

All the anti-victim affidavits had the same stereotyped contents asserting that the local MP and other Congressmen had helped the Sikhs. None of them went into specific details of how the Congress leaders had helped the Sikhs during the carnage. But even if their credibility was found acceptable, the anti-victims affidavits could at best have been used to corroborate the defence of the Congress leaders. Misra instead used the anti-victim affidavits as a substitute for the non-existent defence of the Congress leaders, thereby sparing them the risk of facing the cross examination.

Another notable aspect of Misra’s fix-it inquiry was, he conducted it throughout in the secrecy of in camera proceedings. Generally, whether it is a court of law or commission of inquiry, the power of holding in camera proceedings is sparingly used so as to maintain the credibility of the proceedings. But, just as the Congress leaders could not risk facing the lawyers of the victims, Misra could not afford to let the press attend his proceedings lest they caught on to his cover-up attempts. When a few reports came out initially despite his ban on the entry of the press, Misra passed an unprecedented order threatening to take action against the newspapers that continue to report the Commission’s proceedings.

Later, when he was to examine some public officials in the course of the inquiry, he turned all the more secretive and kept in the dark even the lawyers of the victims. That was the last straw for the Citizens Justice Committee (CJC), the main representative of the victims. It withdrew from the proceedings half-way through the inquiry, causing embarrassment to Misra. Not the least because the CJC could not be dismissed as a bunch of hot-headed activists since it consisted of highly respected establishment figures such as S.M. Sikri, former chief justice of India, V.M. Tarkunde and R.S. Narula, former high court judges, Soli Sorabjee, senior advocate in the Supreme Court, Rajni Kothari, political scientist, Lt Gen J.S. Aurora, the Bangladesh war hero, and Khushwant Singh, author and columnist.

The CJC was formed under the chairmanship of Sikri with the express object of helping the Commission arrive at the truth. But Misra’s machinations forced it to walk out saying his unusual procedure only served the purpose of “shielding the culprits and suppressing the truth.” In other words, a group headed by a former chief justice of India accused a serving Supreme Court judge of subverting an inquiry by lying and colluding with the powers-that-be. The charge sounds all the more serious considering that the inquiry was into a massacre of 4,000 citizens right in the Capital.

On the eve of the massacre, P.V. Narasimha Rao, who as home minister was responsible for what was then the Union territory of Delhi, assured the press that everything would be under control within a couple of hours. Misra absolved him of any responsibility for the administrative collapse during the three-day massacre. Years later, after Rao became Prime Minister and Misra retired as chief justice of India, Rao made Misra the first chairman of, of all the things, the National Human Rights Commission. Misra has since joined Congress and become its member in the Rajya Sabha.

In April 1989, emboldened by Misra’s clean chit to him, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi declared in Parliament: “The terrible bloodbath of November 1984 was a carnage which will rest for ever on the conscience of all decent Indians.” The material put together in this CD shows that the Misra inquiry and the subsequent motions of follow up action were no less a matter that should rest for ever on the conscience of all decent Indians.

For the record, the Misra Commission recommended a committee to look into allegations that many cases were either not registered or not properly investigated. The first proposal the committee made in 1987 was for registration of a murder case against former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar. The police did not act on the committee’s instruction. Instead, an associate of Sajjan Kumar obtained a stay from the Delhi high court on the very functioning of the committee. In October 1989, the high court quashed the very appointment of the committee. About five months later, the V.P. Singh Government appointed a fresh committee minus the defect pointed out by the high court. Subsequently, many cases came to be taken up by the police but because of the delay and cursory investigation less than five per cent of those have resulted in convictions. Most of the convictions were for minor offences like rioting and violation of curfew orders. Needless to add, no political leader has so far been convicted for his complicity in the 1984 massacre.

Meanwhile, there was another committee, again recommended by the Misra Commission, to identify delinquent police officials. A report submitted by one of the two committee members recommended various degrees of punishment to 72 police officials, including six IPS officers. But due to some reason or the other, the Government has so far not taken action against any of the officials.

It was against this dismal background of legal deception and unfulfilled expectations that the Vajpayee Government took the momentous decision in December 1999 to accept the demand for a fresh judicial inquiry into the whole issue of the 1984 carnage. In Parliament, members of all the parties, including the Congress party, passed a resolution supporting the Government’s decision in this regard. The subsequent appointment of the Justice G.T. Nanavati Commission is nevertheless an unprecedented development. The Misra Commission earned the dubious distinction of giving such a report that the Government was prompted to order an inquiry into the matter all over again.

Fortunately, despite a lapse of more than 16 years since the carnage, the decision to hold a fresh judicial inquiry has paid off. Hundreds of victims and witnesses responded enthusiastically by filing affidavits and adducing evidence in public hearings before the Nanavati Commission. Though it apparently took a while to locate the old records, the Vajpayee Government has been more forthcoming in disclosing documents related to the decisions taken by authorities during and after the carnage. In the process, a whole lot of new evidence has come to light thanks to the ongoing proceedings of the Nanavati Commission.

For instance, many eminent persons have for the first time been able to put on record how home minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and lt governor of Delhi P.G. Gavai dithered the carnage when asked to take prompt action and call in the Army. Several depositions before the Nanavati Commission have also come up with fresh evidence against Congress leaders H.K.L. Bhagat and Sajjan Kumar for their role in the violence. As for the complicity of the police, one very significant pattern of evidence that has now emerged is that the first priority of top officers throughout Delhi, from the commissioner downwards, seems to have been to disarm Sikhs and arrest them. The Nanavati Commission’s proceedings also yielded documentary evidence (mainly in the form of Kusum Lata Mittal’s report) giving the lie to the Misra Commission’s finding that the violence escalated because police stations had failed to keep their seniors informed about the gravity of the situation.

A lot of such tell-tale evidence that has come up before the Nanavati Commission as well as official and non-official reports given over the years in connection with the 1984 carnage have been painstakingly put together in this CD. It is hoped that the CD will, at the very least, serve as a record for the posterity and provide insights into how a state that prides itself on being secular and democratic was complicit in a massacre of members of a minority community. It is also hoped that the Nanavati Commission, conscious of its position in history, will undo the mischief of its predecessor and help the victims secure justice, howsoever belatedly.

Every citizen concerned about the health of our democracy has a vital stake in helping establish the principle that no political party should be allowed to use mass killings to reap a political harvest. The Congress party did it in 1984 victimising Sikhs. The BJP tried to do it in 2002 victimising Muslims. Since he has been appointed to head the inquiry into the Gujarat riots as well, Justice Nanavati has been conferred, in the eyes of history, a special responsibility to unravel this kind of cynical exploitation of baser instincts. No matter what the outcome of Justice Nanavati’s exertions, this CD is offered as a humble and heart-felt tribute to the thousands of unknown men, women and children who for no fault of theirs were killed, raped, widowed, orphaned or rendered homeless in India’s Capital in those fateful days of 1984.

COMPENSATION TO VICTIMS

While the courts have by and large failed to secure justice to carnage victims, they have been able to make headway on the issue of compensation. But for judicial intervention, the Government would have got away with a meagre compensation. Initially, it gave a compensation of only Rs 10,000 for each death and up to Rs 1,000 to each injured person. As for damage to property, the compensation ranged from Rs 1,000 to Rs 10,000. Not surprisingly, many victims saw these meagre amounts as a further affront. Some victims even refused to accept the compensation.

In 1986, on the insistence of the Citizens Justice Committee, the Misra Commission asked the Government to enhance the compensation amounts. The Government gave another Rs 10,000 in death cases.

Subsequently, the courts made up to some extent for the Government’s apathy. In 1992, the Supreme Court directed that the interest on the loans advanced to riot victims should be reduced to one per cent between 1984 and 1992. And then in 1996, one compassionate judge of the Delhi high court, Justice Anil Dev Singh, directed compensation of Rs 3.50 lakh for each person killed in the 1984 carnage. The then BJP Government in Delhi accepted this judgment and decided not to file an appeal against it. The enhanced compensation of Rs 3.50 lakh was paid in about 80 per cent of the cases in 1998-99. Some claims are still pending for various reasons.

Punjabi Janta Forums - Janta Di Pasand · « **on:** June 01, 2009, 03:55:54 PM »

Deleted User · « **Reply #1 on:** June 01, 2009, 03:57:31 PM »

wat is this
is dis a book????
main ta dekh ke dar gayi
apa nai pad sakde hath jod ke mafi mangde aa

Tezy_Sandhu · « **Reply #2 on:** June 01, 2009, 03:59:34 PM »

Sequence of Events...

A recapitulation of the 1984 Delhi carnage in which about 4,000 Sikhs were massacred in three days in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination.

October 31, 1984:

9.20 am: Indira Gandhi was shot by two of her security guards at her residence No. 1, Safdarjung Road, and rushed to All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

11 am: Announcement on All India Radio specifying that the guards who shot Indira Gandhi were Sikhs. A big crowd was collecting near AIIMS.

2 pm: Though her death was yet to be confirmed officially, it became common knowledge because of BBC bulletins and special afternoon editions of newspapers.

4 pm: Rajiv Gandhi returned from West Bengal and reached AIIMS. Stray incidents of attacks on Sikhs in and around that area.

5.30 pm: The cavalcade of President Zail Singh, who returned from a foreign visit, was stoned as it approached AIIMS.

Late evening and night: Mobs fanned out in different directions from AIIMS. The violence against Sikhs spread, starting in the neighbouring constituency of Congress councillor Arjun Dass. The violence included the burning of vehicles and other properties of Sikhs. That happened even in VIP areas like the crossroads near Prithviraj Road where cars and scooters belonging to Sikhs were burnt.

Shortly after Rajiv Gandhi was sworn in as Prime Minister, senior advocate and Opposition leader Ram Jethmalani met home minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and urged him to act fast and save Sikhs from further attacks. Delhi’s lt governor P.G. Gavai and police commissioner S.C. Tandon visited some of the violence-affected areas. Despite all these developments, no measures were taken to control the violence or prevent further attacks on Sikhs throughout the night between October 31 and November 1.

November 1, 1984:

Several Congress leaders held meetings on the night of October 31 and morning of November 1, mobilising their followers to attack Sikhs on a mass scale. The first killing of a Sikh reported from east Delhi in the early hours of November 1. About 9 am, armed mobs took over the streets of Delhi and launched a massacre. Everywhere the first targets were Gurudwaras – to prevent Sikhs from collecting there and putting up a combined defence.

Mobs were armed with iron rods of a uniform size. Activist editor Madhu Kishwar saw some of the rods being distributed among the miscreants. Mobs also had an abundant supply of petrol and kerosene. Victims traced the source of kerosene to dealers belonging to the Congress party. For instance, a Congress worker called Brahmanand Gupta, a kerosene dealer, figures prominently in affidavits filed from Sultanpuri.

Every police station had a strength of about 100 men and 50-60 weapons. Yet, no action was taken against miscreants in most places. The few places where the local police station took prompt measures against mobs, hardly any killings took place there. Farsh Bazar and Karol Bagh are two such examples. But in other localities, the priority of the police, as it emerges from the statement of the then police commissioner S.C. Tandon before the Nanavati Commission, was to take action against Sikhs who dared to offer resistence. All the Sikhs who fired in self-defence were disarmed by the police and even arrested on trumped up charges.

Mobs generally included teams attending to specific tasks. When shops were to be looted, the first team that gets into action would kill and remove all obstacles. The second team specialises in breaking locks. The third team would engage in looting. And the fourth team would set the place on fire.

Most of the mobs were led by Congress members, including those from affluent families. For instance, a Youth Congress leader called Satsangi led a mob in the posh Maharani Bagh. The worst affected areas were however far flung, low income colonies like Trilokpuri, Mongolpuri, Sultanpuri and Palam Colony.

The Congress leaders identified by the victims as organisers of the carnage include three MPs H.K.L. Bhagat, Sajjan Kumar and Dharam Dass Shastri and 10 councillors Arjan Dass, Ashok Kumar, Deep Chand, Sukhan Lal Sood, Ram Narayan Verma, D.R. Chhabbra, Bharat Singh, Vasudev, Dharam Singh and Mela Ram.

November 2,1984:

Curfew was in force throughout Delhi – but only on paper. The Army was also deployed throughout Delhi but nowhere was it effective because the police did not co-operate with the soldiers who were not empowered to open fire without the consent of senior police officers or executive magistrates. Meanwhile, mobs continued to rampage with the same ferocity.

November 3,1984:

It was only towards the evening of November 3 that the police and the Army acted in unison and the violence subsided immediately after that. Whatever violence took place the next two or three days was on a much smaller scale and rather sporadic.

Aftermath of the carnage:

Most of the arrested miscreants were released at the earliest. But the Sikhs arrested for firing in self-defence generally remained in detention for some weeks. Worse, there was also a pattern throughout Delhi of the police not registering proper cases on the complaints of victims. Instead, the police registered vaguely worded omnibus FIRs which did not deal with any specific incident or person. As if the damage done by such FIRs was not bad enough, the police made little effort to investigate the cases and trace the miscreants. The only acknowledgement of any wrongdoing on their part was the appointment of a committee headed by senior police officer Ved Marwah to probe the role of the police.

Two remarkable initiatives that came on the same month as the carnage, in a bid to make up for the failure of the Government, were from human rights organisations and a leading Opposition party. People’s Union of Civil Liberties and People’s Union for Democratic Rights came out with a devastating expose in a booklet titled, Who are the guilty? The Bharatiya Janata Party contradicted the Government’s claim then that only 600 people were killed in the Delhi carnage. On the basis of a survey done by its cadres, the BJP came out with a death toll of 2,700, which is remarkably close to the official tally of 2,733 arrived at three years later.

On December 27, 1984, the Lok Sabha elections were held and the Congress party had a landslide victory bagging over 400 seats for the first and so far the only time in the Indian electoral history. The election held under the shadow of Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the subsequent massacre was marked by an anti-Sikh sentiment whipped up by the Congress party campaign.

In the early months of 1985, two more NGO reports followed: one by Citizens for Democracy headed by Justice V.M. Tarkunde and another by a Citizens’ Commission headed by former chief justice of India S.M. Sikri. Both indicted the Government and the ruling party and called for a judicial inquiry.

A journalist, Rahul Kuldeep Bedi, filed a writ petition in the Delhi high court seeking an inquiry into the role of the police. PUDR filed a writ petition in the same court seeking a direction to the Government to appoint a Commission of Inquiry. Both the petitions were dismissed.

On April 26, 1985, i.e. almost six months after the carnage, the Rajiv Gandhi Government appointed the Ranganath Misra Commission to inquire into “the allegations in regard to the incidents of organised violence” in Delhi.

In June 1985, a group of eminent persons and representative of human rights organisations came together under the banner of the Citizens Justice Committee (CJC) to help the Misra Commission unravel the truth.

The Misra Commission held all its proceedings in camera and took the help of the CJC to get affidavits from victims.

On March 31, 1986, the CJC notified its withdrawal as the Misra Commission kept it out of most of the inquiry holding “in camera proceedings within in camera.”

In August 1986, the Misra Commission submitted its report to the Government, which in turn tabled it in Parliament in February 1987. The report vindicated the CJC’s apprehension that the Misra Commission would whitewash the role of the Government and the ruling Congress party.

On February 23, 1987, the Government appointed three committees on the recommendation of the Misra Commission. (1) Jain-Banerjee committee to pursue cases that have either not been registered or not properly investigated. (2) Kapur-Mittal committee to identify delinquent police officials. (3) Ahooja committee to arrive at the official death toll of the carnage.

In August 1987, the Ahooja committee determined that the number of persons killed in Delhi in the 1984 carnage were 2,733.

In November 1987, the Delhi high court stayed the functioning of the Jain-Banerjee committee because of its very first recommendation, which was to register a murder case against former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar. The petition was filed by one of the co-accused, Brahmanand Gupta.

In October 1989, the Delhi high court quashed the notification appointing the Jain-Banerjee committee. The court found that the powers of monitoring of investigation and the institution of new case conferred on the committee were illegal.

March 1, 1990: The two members of the Kapur-Mittal committee gave separate reports. Justice Dalip Kapur gave no finding on the ground that the committee had not been empowered to summon police officials to hear their version. Kusum Lata Mittal identified 72 police officials, including six IPS officers, recommending various penalties against them.

March 27, 1990: The Delhi Administration prompted by the newly elected V.P. Singh Government appointed the Poti-Rosha committee without the legal defects pointed out by the high court in the case of the Jain-Banerjee committee.

August-September 1990: The Poti-Rosha committee sent two batches of recommendations covering altogether 30 affidavits, including the case against Sajjan Kumar. When a CBI team went to his house to arrest him, Sajjan Kumar and his supporters locked up the officials and detained them till his lawyer, R.K. Anand (now a Congress MP), obtained “anticipatory bail” from the high court. Subsequently, the two committee members, Subramaniam Poti and Padam Rosha, declined to carry on in office when their first term expired on September 22.

October-November 1990: The Delhi Administration constituted a fresh committee comprising J.D. Jain and D.K. Aggarwal, to take over the work of the Poti-Rosha committee.

June 30, 1993: After making recommendations from time to time from among the remaining 1,000-odd affidavits, including 21 affidavits against Congress leaders H.K.L Bhagat and Sajjan Kumar, the Jain-Aggarwal committee submitted a detailed report giving a comprehensive account of how the police scuttled carnage cases at the stages of registration, investigation and prosecution. The Jain-Aggarwal committee also recommendation action several police officials for their lapses.

1994: The Delhi Government under Madan Lal Khurana appointed an Advisory Committee under the chairmanship of Justice R.S. Naroola. The Advisory Committee reviewed the status of the recommendations made the Poti-Rosha committee, Jain-Aggarwal committee and Kapur-Mittal committee. The Advisory Committee also made a particular reference to the failure of the police, which came under the Congress-ruled Central government, to book the cases recommended against Congress leaders H.K.L. Bhagat and Sajjan Kumar.

1995: On the basis of the Advisory Committee’s report, Delhi chief minister Madan Lal Khurana repeatedly asked the Centre to let the police take action on the 21 affidavits against Congress leaders H.K.L. Bhagat and Sajjan Kumar. It was only when Khurana threatened to complain to the National Human Rights Commission, the Centre sent those affidavits to the Delhi Government.

2000: The Atal Behari Vajpayee Government appointed a fresh judicial inquiry into the 1984 carnage under the chairmanship of Justice G.T. Nanavati. The justification offered for it was the failure to punish the guilty. Despite the lapse of over 15 years, the Nanavati Commission received hundreds of fresh affidavits from victims as well as victims, including prominent persons such as I.K. Gujral, Khushwant Singh, Kuldip Nayar and Jagjit Singh Aurora.

2001-02: The Nanavati Commission records much damaging evidence brought on record for the first time since 1984. Arguments pending at the time of release of this CD.

Tezy_Sandhu · « **Reply #3 on:** June 01, 2009, 04:05:49 PM »

http://www.sikhgenocide.org/biggenocide.html

Deleted User · « **Reply #4 on:** June 01, 2009, 04:09:51 PM »

eda vada reply pad-de pad-de raat nikal jani rte din v :marro: :marro:

Tezy_Sandhu · « **Reply #5 on:** June 01, 2009, 04:30:11 PM »

lado rani plz don't make fun of this topic..... plz be serious bout it... sahi kiha tu lado rani k kihde kol ena time aa k oh ena wada topic pade.... oh log te pagal c jehde sade layi saheediyan pa gaye... ja jehde gharon beghar ho gaye... afsos hunda edan diyan gallan sunke k jihna na sade layi ena kuch kita sade kol ajj time e nai ohna bare kuch padan lai...

Deleted User · « **Reply #6 on:** June 01, 2009, 04:58:22 PM »

im sry tezy singh ji...i hurt u bt im so lazy ehna kuj pad nai sakdi....te baki gal rahi abt history bhut kuj pata hai sanu....kise ki kita hai dad always dasde rehnde aa...sry
rab rakha

█ ▌ﻝαᔕ ▌█ · « **Reply #7 on:** June 01, 2009, 05:04:42 PM »

Quote from: lado_rani on June 01, 2009, 04:58:22 PM

im sry tezy singh ji...i hurt u bt im so lazy ehna kuj pad nai sakdi....te baki gal rahi abt history bhut kuj pata hai sanu....kise ki kita hai dad always dasde rehnde aa...sry
rab rakha

tu bolna jarroe hundaa...j nahi parnaa te chupp kar k baith jaa

and tezy 22 mara motta ta pata wa..but ehna khais ja correct knownledge hani mere kol..
i ill sure read ur topic and infact i already did first half of it....
thanxxxx tezy 22ji bohat wadhia topic laiye k aye ho jado k hun 1984 de bluestar de dinna nu sari sikh kom yaad kar rahi a

DEEP's · « **Reply #8 on:** June 02, 2009, 04:00:49 PM »

Two Decades And One Thought....

It’s been 21 years since the capital saw the 1984 “Anti Sikh” riots in the capital. The so called metropolitan city and one of the most modern cities of India was burning in pain. People who happen to survive the partitioning 50 years back were once again a part of extreme brutality in a more grotesque manner in 1984. The Sikh families in Delhi must have felt like refugees in their own country. Thousands of Sikhs had to suffer because of a single wrong action taken by a Sikh body-guard, who killed Ms. Indira Gandhi.
Every action added one on to the other. Today most of us are least bothered about what happened 20 years back, probably because none of our dear ones suffered with the terror in 1984 but can we forget people like Rishpal Singh, who lost his entire paternal side during the 1984 riots. Hundreds of Sardars were pulled out from the narrow lanes of Gumti area and set to fire in front of their shrieking women and yelling kids. Not even a single person came for their help. In fact the Sikh boys who use to play with colourful turbans had chopped off their hair just to escape death. Still 4000 thousand people were murdered in three days, some were simply butchered others were killed by putting a burning tier down till their waist. No one of us can feel that pain. Few know that it is impossible to take that burning tyre out of your body.
When all this was going on, according to eye-witnesses and police records, the first priority of police officers was to disarm Sikhs, even though it was they who were under attack.
There was an incident where a Sikh Jawan was pulled down from train, his turban was kicked and he was stabbed in chest. Yet this country, till date, relies on the Sikh regiment whenever a major operation is requested against emergency. It’s because these people are strength of our country, and they will always be. These are people who were targeted during the riots, these were the one who were killed during the black period, these were the people who were asking for help from us to save their lives but then these are people who send their sons to borders to fight for us. They are alert there, so that we can sleep here.
Today, after 20 years, when the Prime Minister of India has announced compensation for the riot victims, I don’t think that this will solve the issue. This exercise is just to hide the brutal act done by the government. The money given can definitely be a sign of relief to the people who have been fighting for justice for past 20 years. But how can that money be justified against the brutal act done by the senior leaders like Jagdish tytler of the congress party and the famous shameful explanation given by Late Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, “When a mighty tree falls, the earth is bound to shake”

DEEP's · « **Reply #9 on:** June 02, 2009, 04:02:50 PM »

http://en.wordpress.com/tag/1984-sikh-riots/

Tezy_Sandhu · « **Reply #10 on:** June 03, 2009, 12:58:18 PM »

Deep ji thanks tuhada k tusi es topic ch interest dikhaya te informaion share kiti sade naal...plz age to v edan di information sade naal share karde rahina....
hanji jive ke tusi dekhiya k lado rani and sayad hor v kai sade members aa jihna nu wade wade topic padan ch problem aundi aa ja fer ohnu nu ena kuch padna boring lagda... ohna lai main eh video post karan lagga ithe.. plz tusi sare jane eh video jaroor dekho te je ho sakda te hor lokan nu v daso is video bare.. jo sariyan nu patta lag sake k sikhan naal kee ho riha india ch..
plz everyone watch these videos..... thanks

Operation Bluestar - The Untold Story Of India - Part 1

Operation Bluestar The Untold Story Of India Part 2

Waheguru ji ka khalsa...
Waheguru ji kee fateh...

ƁΔƘΓΔ · « **Reply #11 on:** June 03, 2009, 04:11:28 PM »

Tezy Sandhu bhaji, those two videos are just awesome. I haven't seen them before, and I've watched them both. They provide a really way to put perspective on what happened to the Sikhs, not just the Operation Bluestar.

Recommend others to watch it too!

DAMAHKA · « **Reply #12 on:** June 08, 2009, 01:55:10 AM »

deep da baki sab da dheek a...par eh line ni menu changi lagi..WRONG ACTION TAKEN BY HIS BODYGUARD..ik oh banda apni jaan deke sadi mari moti laaj rakh gya ek ohda action galat si...kise ne harminder sahib te attack da badla lia nahi..so je kise ne step lya oh galat step kida si...

Tezy_Sandhu · « **Reply #13 on:** June 08, 2009, 08:41:50 PM »

yea sahi kiha tusi jatt punjabi dost 22 g

Tezy_Sandhu · « **Reply #14 on:** March 24, 2010, 10:29:28 PM »

Plz share ur information bout 1984

Tezy_Sandhu · « **Reply #15 on:** March 30, 2010, 08:59:10 AM »

Punjabi lion 22 g aag topic pado te ehde wich jo video aa oh dekho kafi kuch pta lag jayu.

Author Topic: CARNAGE 84..... PLZ READ IT AND IF U HAVE INFORMATION BOUT IT POST IT HERE (Read 3638 times)

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█ ▌ﻝαᔕ ▌█

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