The division bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait and Justice Neena Bansal Krishna said that if the prosecution or the complainant were aggrieved by the judgment of acquittal, there was nothing which prevented them from filing the appeal.

The bench observed that observed that “It was not disputed on behalf of the State that no further investigations have been carried out by the Investigating Agencies and no fresh material in respect of the alleged offences has been placed on record. There is no explanation as to why the State or the complainant did not file the appeal on the grounds that were available even at the time of acquittal,” the bench stated in the order.

The said case dates back to the year of 1984, when the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had been assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, and an FIR had been filed at the Saraswati Vihar Police Station for the incidents of rioting, looting and killing of Sikh persons in the national capital in the months of October and November of the said year. The said FIR had been registered for offences under Sections 147 (Rioting), 148 (Rioting, armed with deadly weapon), 149 (unlawful assembly), 307 (attempt to commit murder), 436 (Mischief by fire or explosive substance with intent to destroy house), and 427 (Mischief causing damage) of Indian Penal code (IPC).

Notably, all the accused in the case were acquitted by the Sessions Court through an order dated March 28, 1995.

In the current hearing, the prosecution highlighted that a two-member Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by former judge of the Delhi High Court Justice SN Dhingra and IPS Officer Abhishek Dular, appointed by the Supreme Court, had recommended in the year 2019 that an appeal may be filed in the said case. The said SIT was appointed to probe the 186 cases related to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots had also criticised the role of the police and other authorities in dealing with the cases.

However, the divisive bench held that even after the report of the SIT, there was a delay of about four years for which no cogent explanation has been given. It also noted that it recently dismissed three Criminal Leave Appeals, where the delay was less than 1000 days.

“The reason now been given is the findings by the SIT, but the SIT has also observed that the reason for disbelieving the witnesses on account of the delay of FIR was not correct. It is evident that the grounds of appeal which are now been agitated are purely on the merits of the case which existed even at the time of trial and consequent acquittal,” it added in the order.

It further observed that the reason now being cited is the findings by the Special Investigation Team (SIT). However, the SIT also observed that the reason for disbelieving the witnesses on account of the delay of FIR was not correct, the Court noted. This ground existed at the time of trial and acquittal, the Court pointed out.

“It is evident that the grounds of appeal which are now been agitated are purely on the merits of the case which existed even at the time of trial and consequent acquittal. No reason whatsoever has been given for explaining the delay of about 28 years. Pertinently, the Report was given by SIT on 15.04.2019 but even thereafter there is a delay of about four years for which no cogent explanation has been given,” the Court said.

The bench noted that there has been a delay of nearly 28 years in the present case and no explanation has been given for the same. The Court further held that grounds taken by the State were not justifiable either.

“In the present case, the delay is 27 years and 335 days and there is no explanation for this inordinate delay. Moreover, the grounds taken by the state are not justifiable. Therefore, we find no merit in the present application, and the same is hereby dismissed”.

Therefore, the Court dismissed the application seeking the condonation of delay as well as the leave petition.

The order can be read here:

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37-year-long mockery of searching for the killers of 1984 Sikh massacre

The post Delhi HC rejects plea of State to condone a delay of 28 years days in filing appeal against the acquittal order in anti-Sikh riots of 1984. appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
It may be considered as an unpopular opinion but there’s no cause for celebration over Sajjan Kumar’s conviction in the anti-Sikh riots where scores of Sikh’s were murdered in cold blood.
 
Former Member of Parliament, belonging to the opposition and so-called secular Congress Party, Sajjan Kumar was convicted by Delhi High Court on December 17 for his complicity in the anti-Sikh massacre.
 
Thousands of Sikhs were murdered during the first week of November 1984 all over India following the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards who were enraged by the military invasion on the holiest shrine of the Sikhs in June that year.
 
Gandhi had ordered an army operation to flush out a handful of militants who had fortified the Golden Temple Complex in Amritsar. This came after a peaceful agitation of moderate Sikh leadership in Punjab, for state autonomy and several concessions for Sikh minority, turned violent.
 
A spike in the killings of Hindus and the critics of extremism culminated into an ill-conceived army attack that left many devotees dead and historic buildings inside the complex destroyed. This had outraged the Sikhs who felt that the action was preventable as alternative means, such as peaceful negotiations could have been used to deal with the situation. As a result of this controversial operation, two of her bodyguards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, killed Gandhi in cold blood.
 
The activists belonging to Gandhi’s Congress party were seen leading the mobs that killed Sikhs in a systematic manner with the help of police to avenge the murder of their leader. Kumar was one of those high-profile leaders who was seen instigating the mobs in New Delhi where close to 3,000 Sikhs were murdered. 
 
34 years later, the Delhi High Court pronounced him guilty of conspiracy in murders and creating enmity between the Hindus and the Sikhs. He was given a life sentence for these crimes. He was earlier acquitted by the lower court. Not only the Delhi High Court overturned that verdict, but it also affirmed its belief in the witnesses who stuck to their testimonies with courage and conviction. Among them were Jagdish Kaur – who lost her husband and a son, besides three cousins, and Nirpreet Kaur who lost her father.
 
Nevertheless, justice has hardly been served if we consider the quantum of punishment, the time it took to bring this closure and the inter-generational damage this catastrophe has caused.
 
First of all, what Kumar and his colleagues did was no less than an act of terrorism. Though the Sikh extremists were dealt with firmly when the army was used to attack the Golden Temple Complex, the police machinery openly sided with the goons who went after the Sikhs. The army wasn’t pressed into service immediately when the Sikhs needed it the most.
 
The Delhi High Court Judgement has proved beyond doubt that the police have been protecting Kumar all these years by failing to register a case against him and even going to the extent of tampering with the evidence. The details in the judgment suggest that the police either remained indifferent to the violence by refusing to protect the victims, or they shamelessly participated in the massacre. Contrast this against the extrajudicial murders of Sikh extremists by the police in the name of national security right under the patronage of the state. It is well documented how the police and security forces wiped out Sikh militancy in Punjab by using excessive force and killing the alleged extremists in staged shootouts.  
 
Secondly, Kumar has been convicted after 34 years, whereas the assassins of Gandhi were convicted within five years. While Beant Singh was shot to death immediately after the murder of Gandhi, Satwant Singh was hanged alongside the conspirator Kehar Singh in 1989. That the entire Sikh community was punished is a different story.
 
Notably, Kehar Singh wasn’t directly involved in the assassination. He was the uncle of Beant Singh. It is believed that he had provoked Beant Singh to murder her, even though the evidence against him wasn’t conclusive. Yet, he was hanged to death for conspiracy. This was despite the fact that his guilt wasn’t sufficiently proven.
 
The question, therefore, arises that if Kehar Singh could be hanged for conspiracy, why Kumar did not receive the death sentence. This is not to suggest that I support the death sentence. But I do want to question the double standards. How could someone accused of conspiring in the murder of one political leader get a death sentence; while someone who masterminded the mass murders got life imprisonment? 

In fact, Human Rights Lawyer H.S. Phoolka who has been spearheading the campaign for justice all these years does not support his execution. Phoolka was in the forefront of the judicial fight against Kumar. Some other Sikh activists, such as Canada-based author and co-founder of World Sikh Organization Gian Singh Sandhu have also rejected the demand for hanging Kumar. Sandhu insists that there was no capital punishment in the Sikh empire led by Ranjit Singh, so why should Kumar be hanged?
 
Thirdly, for all these years the victims’ families have been forced to live in penury and many orphaned kids took to drugs or petty crime. The women who were raped during the violence hardly got any justice. The social trauma had resulted in broken homes, domestic violence and substance abuse. No court of law can ever compensate for this loss.
 
Lastly, the massacre fuelled more political violence. Some of those who survived were forced to join militant ranks. Nirpreet Kaur herself joined an extremist group that wanted to establish a separate Sikh state. She once told me during a radio interview that she wanted to avenge the death of her father and that prompted her to join a militant organization. During her incarceration in Tihar Jail, she came under the influence of a senior jail police officer Kiran Bedi – who tried to reform prisoners through a more humanistic approach. This had changed the course of her life and once she was out, Kaur established an NGO to help the victims’ families.

The ugly events of 1984 had alienated the Sikhs from the national mainstream and had galvanized the movement for a separate Sikh homeland. Overseas, the Air India Flight 182 was bombed mid-air in June 1985. 329 people had died in the blast. The crime was blamed on Sikh separatists based in Canada. Some of those charged, but later acquitted, were deeply hurt by the developments of 1984. The delay in justice to the victims of 1984 has further widened this gulf as the movement for a separate Sikh state refuses to die in Canada.  
 
Kumar, his party and the Indian state, in general, need to take moral responsibility for the damage caused by the Sikh militants. You cannot squarely blame them for violence and extremism when you yourself have created an atmosphere for hatred and animosity. If that is not enough, the people abroad who ask for justice for 1984 are quickly labelled as separatists or extremists, whereas the Indian officials are themselves to be blamed for breeding violence by killing their own citizens in the streets of the national capital and elsewhere. 
 
On top of that, the 1984 episode laid the foundation for the 2002 anti-Muslim massacre. Kumar’s party, that wants to run against the presently ruling right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2019 general elections on the plank of secularism, have to acknowledge that it was they who introduced an era of impunity to Indian politics by engineering the Sikh massacre.
 
Scores of Muslims were murdered across the state of Gujarat in 2002 following the burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims. Over 50 passengers had died in the incident that was blamed on Muslim fundamentalists by the BJP. The current Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat back then. A similar method was applied to target the Muslims all over the state, just like it was used against Sikhs in 1984. Many believe that had justice been done in 1984, 2002 riots wouldn’t have happened. The legitimacy given to the anti-Sikh massacre because of the involvement of the state gave BJP an excuse to organize a similar pogrom.
 
Today, under the BJP government, the attacks on almost all religious minorities have grown. Like it or not, the process of turning India into a majoritarian state had begun in 1984. No amount of justice through courts can ever fix that.    
 
Those who continue to trust the Indian system and its judiciary and often give the rationale that the wheels of justice are slow, need to ask themselves why only for minorities? Kumar’s conviction is just another reminder that minorities in the world’s so-called largest democracy have never been treated with respect.
 

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As the Delhi High Court sentences Congress leader Sajjan Kumar to life imprisonment, Abhisar Sharma narrates what 1984 meant for him personally and how it brings back memories of one of the darkest periods of Independent India. 1984 was a chapter that was revisited later again and again as Indians refused to learn from one of the most shameful events in Indian history. In this episode of ‘Bol Ke Lab Azad Hain Tere’, Abhisar asks – is this a one time victory, or will there be justice for the victims of 1992 and 2002 as well, thereby restoring the faith of the common man in the wheels of justice?

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

The post 1984: A Dark Chapter in Indian History appeared first on SabrangIndia.

New Delhi: The Delhi Patiala House Court sentenced one of two convicts Yashpal Singh to death for his role in 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The other convict, Naresh Sherawat was given the life sentence. Both were convicted on November 15 for killing two young Sikhs in Delhi’s Mahipalpur area after the assassination of erstwhile Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984.
 
This is the first death sentence awarded in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. Both convicts have also been fined with Rs. 35 lakh each.
 
Naresh Sherawat and Yashpal Singh were held guilty of killing Hardev Singh and Avtar Singh.
 
The murder case was lodged in 1993 based on a complaint filed by Santokh Singh, brother of Hardev Singh. The Delhi Police had closed the case in 1994 citing lack of evidence but a Special Investigation Team reopened the case.
 
As per a report, the SIT said in a statement that it was a “brutal murder of two innocent young persons aged around 25 each. It was a planned murder since the accused were carrying kerosene oil, sticks etc.”
 
Singh and Sherawat “took out the victims, who were hiding inside a room, injured them with dangerous weapons with the intention to kill and threw them down from the first floor”, causing their deaths, the judge said while delivering the punishment.
 
“An eyewitness and relative of the two victims said that the mob below then poured petrol and some powder in their mouths which caught fire. “Tyres were hung around their necks and burnt. As they struggled, the attackers laughed and said ‘they’re like dancing monkeys’,” remembered the relative,” reported NDTV.
 
The two accused were held guilty under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code, including murder, attempt to murder and voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means.
 
“The Vasant Kunj police had lodged an FIR on a handwritten affidavit submitted before the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission of Inquiry in 1985 on the recommendation of Justice J.D. Jain and D.K. Aggarwal committee. The complainant, Santokh Singh, was an assistant granthi at Gurdwara Sadar Bazar in Delhi Cantonment at that time. He had said in his complaint that a mob on November 1, 1984, attacked them, killed his brother Avtar Singh (24) and his customer Hardev Singh (26), and looted their shops in the presence of police officers,” The Hindu reported.
 
“When the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission was constituted, a “first informant”, Santokh Singh, filed an affidavit stating that 500 people looted shops in Mahipalpur in 1984. Based on his affidavit, another FIR was registered in 1993, and an ACP-rank officer filed an “untrace report” in court. The Metropolitan Magistrate, however, had said, “Police were at liberty to file challan as and when accused persons were arrested,” reported India Express.
 
“In 2017, the chargesheet in the case was filed by a Special Investigation Team, constituted in 2015 to re-investigate “serious criminal cases” filed in Delhi after the anti-Sikh riots, which had been closed,” the report said.
 
“During arguments in this case, the defence counsel had said that registration of two FIRs for the same incident was illegal. The court said: “This case involves extraordinary circumstances justifying the registration of the second FIR.” The defence had also pointed out that the witnesses were examined after 33 years and none of the accused persons were named correctly by them. The court, however, said that this was “immaterial” and recounted one instance involving the witness Sangat Singh, whose brother Hardev Singh was murdered,” the report added.
 
“Additional Sessions Judge Ajay Pandey held Sherawat and Singh guilty of killing Hardev Singh and Avtar Singh during the riots, and said that “victims of mass genocide” cannot be left in “the lurch,” the report said.
 
The 1984 anti-Sikh riots left nearly 3,000 people dead, following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The 1984 carnage erupted just hours after she was killed by her Sikh bodyguards.
 
The violence, which occurred mostly in the capital New Delhi, lasted three days when Sikhs were raped, murdered and burned alive, while their homes and businesses were torched.
 
Many believe that justice has been served although it took 34 years to reach this juncture. Relatives of the victims hoped that next up would be two former Congress ministers, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar.
 
https://twitter.com/shammybaweja/status/1064839045224615936
 
Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Union Cabinet Minister of Food Processing and Member of Parliament from Bathinda spoke in favour of BJP for speeding up the process and thanked PM Modi for setting up the SIT in 2015.
 
https://twitter.com/HarsimratBadal_/status/1064848721920368641
 
https://twitter.com/HarsimratBadal_/status/1064840618646691840
 
“We will not rest till the last murderer is brought to justice,” she added.
 
Chief Minister of Punjab, Capt. Amarinder Singh also tweeted in the favour of the sentence.
 
https://twitter.com/capt_amarinder/status/1064853830335000576
 
Sikhs make up 2 per cent of India’s 1.25 billion population.

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Image Courtesy: PTI
 
November brings back memories of fallen heroes of World War II. It has a special significance for two minority communities – the Jews and the Sikhs.
 
It triggers the ugly flashback of their persecution at the hands of dominant communities who were backed by the state.
 
This year marks the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht or the night of broken glass, when violence against Jews broke out on November 9, 1938, following the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris by a Polish Jew teenager.
 
This was in retaliation of the expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany. Since the assassin’s parents were among those expelled, he shot at Ernst Vom Rath, a diplomat attached to the German embassy on November 7. Rath died two days later after which the Nazis organized a pogrom against the Jewish population accusing them of a wider conspiracy against Germany. Their homes, businesses and places of worship were destroyed while dozens of Jews were killed. The night of broken glass is a reference to the glass found littered on the streets following the bloodshed.
 
Likewise, the Sikhs were also targeted during the first week of November 1984 after the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984, at her official residence. Her bodyguards were outraged by an army invasion on the holiest shrine of the Sikhs in Amritsar in June that year. Gandhi had ordered a military attack to flush out religious extremists who had stockpiled weapons inside the place of worship. The ill-conceived army operation had left many innocent worshippers dead and some important buildings heavily destroyed. This had enraged the Sikhs all over the world.
 
Gandhi’s murder was followed by well-organized anti-Sikh massacre across India by the slain leader’s Congress party. Although it claims to be secular, the Congress went the Nazi way and attacked the Sikh homes, businesses and gurdwaras to punish the entire community.
 
Sikh women were raped. About 3,000 people were killed in the national capital of New Delhi alone. Unlike in Germany, New Delhi streets were littered with more than broken glass. After all, tyres and kerosene were used to kill innocent Sikhs by way of necklacing. 
 
In both cases, the Nazis and the Congress party systematically made scapegoats of the two minority groups and consolidated their power by othering them in the eyes of the majority Germans and Hindus, while the police and firefighters remained mute spectators.
 
This month, the two communities came together at Gurdwara Singh Sabha in Surrey to commemorate the victims of the two holocausts that took place in different parts of the world.
 
Genocide Remembrance: Moving From Darkness To Light that was mainly organized by a Sikh activist and researcher Sukhvinder Kaur Vinning and was attended by an award-winning social justice Jewish educator Annie Ohana. The two women never forget to acknowledge the cultural genocide of other groups, including the Indigenous Peoples of Canada and believe that remembrance is important to challenge the attempts to make people forget the history and move on.
 
Indeed, people who forget history are condemned to repeat it and that’s the reason why bigotry continues to grow unchallenged.
 
November is not just an occasion to remember the past but also an occasion to reflect on the present. Not only racism against Jews remains alive, considering the recent murders of 11 Jewish worshippers at a Synagogue in Pittsburgh by an anti-Sematic white supremacist, the attacks on non-Hindus, especially Muslims, Christians and Dalits or untouchables as they are called, have grown in India under a right-wing Hindu nationalist government which is clearly taking advantage of a culture of impunity started by the Congress in 1984.
 
The current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is widely blamed for repeating 1984 in 2002 against Muslims in Gujarat where he was the then Chief Minister. 
 
It is hypocritical to see the privileged society keeps telling the minority communities to forgive and forget, but never fail to forget Remembrance Day or even the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Busloads of tourists are brought to the former residence of Indira Gandhi which has now been turned into a museum and yet the Sikhs are repeatedly lectured to bury the past. Those who are scared to discuss these dark chapters of history need to shed this fear and accept the reality of an unevenly divided world living with selective memory and a false sense of belonging. To change this discourse, we need to first recognize all the historical wrongs and fix them through reconciliation and then make sure they are not allowed to be repeated by populist leaders such as Trump and Modi.

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Image Credit: Sondeep Shankar

 
“Insan abhi tak zinda hai,
 
zinda hone per sharminda hai!”
 
“Human beings are still alive,
 
they are ashamed to be alive!”
 
-Shahid Nadeem’s couplet on the silence of civil society against communal violence.
 
For the last 30 years, on the occasion of every anniversary of 1984 massacre of Sikhs, this author has been reminding the nation how the Indian State and judiciary did not bother to punish the perpetrators of this horrendous genocide of the innocent people. The people which form the second largest religious minority in our country. Every anniversary, the author hoped that by next year, justice would be served and he would not have to write the painful story once again as a reminder. It has not happened in last one year either and the saga of the criminal betrayal by the Indian Republic has no end. The author continues to cry before a deaf and dumb Indian State.
 
Betrayal of governments till 2014.
After giving a free run to the killer gangs, the government appointed a one-man Marwah Commission to find out the perpetrators of the 1984 ‘riots’. As this exercise was proving inconvenient, it was asked to disband itself within a short period of its existence and a sitting Supreme Court Judge Ranga Nath Mishra was asked to conduct an inquiry into 1984 ‘riots’. He submitted his report in 1987. Shockingly, this fact-finding (or fact-hiding) commission headed by Misra observed that “The riots which had a spontaneous origin later attained a channelized method at the hands of gangsters”.
 
The ‘apostle of justice’ and champion of spontaneity, Mishra, was not unable to find out where these gangsters came from. According to Jarnail Singh, author of the book I Accuse: The Anti-Sikh Violence of 1984, Mishra was awarded a berth in Rajya Sabha for this service to the State.
 
In the next two decades, not less than nine commissions of inquiry were instituted. For the Indian State, it became a routine to announce the formations of some new commissions or some more compensation to the families of victims in order to deflect the mounting anger during elections. Highlighting the anti-minority bias of such commissions, H. S. Phoolka, a renowned lawyer, commented that instead of getting convicted, many of the political perpetrators get promoted as rulers.
 
In the latest development, on August 16, 2017, Supreme Court of India ordered the constitution of a panel comprising two of its former judges to examine the justification for closing 241 anti-Sikh riot cases and ordered a probe by the SIT to be completed in the next three months. It is November 2018 (15 months since the order was passed) and these three months are yet to be completed!
 
Betrayal by the present RSS, BJP rulers
RSS claims to have always stood for Hindu-Sikh unity. It occasionally expresses its gratitude to Sikhism for saving Hinduism from Muslim aggression. It may not be irrelevant to note here that RSS does not treat Sikhism as an independent religion which discarded Casteism and the Brahmanical hegemony, but a part of Hinduism. The RSS/BJP leaders blamed Congress for anti-Sikh violence. Modi while addressing a public rally during last parliamentary elections at Jhansi, UP (October 25, 2013) asked Congress leaders to explain who “killed thousands of Sikhs in 1984” and “has anyone been convicted for the Sikh genocide so far?” Modi, during Punjab elections and 2014 general elections, kept referring to ‘qatl-e-aam’ or genocide of Sikhs.
 
After becoming the PM, Modi in a message (dated October 31, 2014) said that anti-Sikh riots in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination were like a “Dagger that pierced through India’s chest…Our own people were murdered, the attack was not on a particular community but on the entire nation.”
 
Hindutva icon, RSS full-timer and PM, Modi lamented the fact that culprits were yet to be booked and tried for this massacre. However, Modi did not tell the nation what the NDA governments, which ruled this country from 1998 to 2004, did to persecute the culprits. Modi also forgot to share the fact that as per the autobiography of LK Advani (page 430); it was his party which forced Indira Gandhi to take an army action infamously named as Operation Blue Star which killed a large number of Sikh pilgrims.
 
Renowned journalist Manoj Mitta, author of the book ‘When a Tree Shook in Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and Its Aftermath’ straightforwardly tells that “Despite the BJP rule, there has hardly been any will to enforce accountability for the massacres that took place under the Congress. It’s as if there is a tacit deal between the sponsors of 1984 and 2002”.
 
This is not what outsiders or critics of the RSS have been telling. The perusal of the contemporary RSS documents shows that the major focus was on condemning the Sikh extremism, eulogizing Indira Gandhi and welcoming the coronation of Rajiv Gandhi as the new prime minister.
 
RSS ideologue Nana Deshmukh’s dehumanised attitude towards the Sikh massacre
The most important proof of such a dehumanized attitude towards the massacre of Sikhs is a document circulated by Late. Nana Deshmukh, a prominent RSS ideologue. This document, titled a ‘Moments of Soul Searching’ circulated by Deshmukh on November 8, 1984, may help in unmasking the criminals involved in the massacre of innocent Sikhs who had nothing to do with the assassination of Indira Gandhi. This document may also throw light on where the cadres came from, who meticulously organized the killing of Sikhs. Nana Deshmukh in this document is seen outlining the justification of the massacre of the Sikh community in 1984.
 
This document also shows the true degenerated and fascist attitude of the RSS towards all the minorities of India. The RSS has been arguing that they are against Muslims and Christians because they are the followers of foreign religions. Here we find them justifying the butchering of Sikhs who according to their own categorization, happened to be the followers of an indigenous religion. In this document, we will hear from the horse’s mouth that the RSS like the then Congress leadership, believed that the massacre of the innocent Sikhs was unavoidable.
 
This document was published in the Hindi Weekly Pratipaksh edited by George Fernandes, who later became the Defence Minister of India in the NDA regime, in its edition of November 25, 1984, titled ‘Indira Congress-RSS collusion’ with the following editorial comment:
 
“The author of the following document is known as an ideologue and policy formulator of the RSS. After the killing of Prime Minister (Indira Gandhi) he distributed this document among prominent politicians. It has a historical significance that is why we have decided to publish it, violating the policy of our Weekly. This document highlights the new affinities developing between the Indira Congress and the RSS. We produce here the Hindi translation of the document.”
 
Deshmukh in his document ‘Moments of Soul Searching’ is seen outlining the justification of the massacre of the Sikh community in 1984. His defence of the carnage can be summed up in the following:
 
1. The massacre of Sikhs was not the handiwork of any group or anti-social elements but the result of a genuine feeling of anger.
 
2. Deshmukh did not distinguish the action of the two security personnel of Indira Gandhi, who happened to be Sikhs, from that of the whole Sikh community. According to his document, the killers of Indira Gandhi were working under some kind of mandate from their community.
 
3. Sikhs themselves invited these attacks, thus advancing the Congress theory of justifying the massacre of the Sikhs.
 
4. He glorified the Operation Blue Star and described any opposition to it as anti-national. When Sikhs were being killed in thousands, he was warning the country of Sikh extremism, thus offering an ideological defence of those killings.
 
5. Sikh community as a whole was responsible for violence in Punjab.
 
6. Sikhs should have done nothing in self-defence but showed patience and tolerance against the killer mobs.
 
7. Sikh intellectuals and not killer mobs were responsible for the massacre. They had turned Sikhs into a militant community, cutting them off from their Hindu roots, thus inviting attacks from the nationalist Indians. Moreover, he treated all Sikhs as part of the same gang and described attacks on them as a reaction of the nationalist Hindus.
 
8. He described Indira Gandhi as the only leader who could keep the country united and after the assassination of such a great leader, such killings could not be avoided.
 
9. Rajiv Gandhi who succeeded Mrs. Gandhi as the PM justified the nation-wide killings of Sikhs by saying, “When a big tree falls the earth shakes.” He was lauded and blessed by Nana Deshmukh at the end of the document.
 
10. Shockingly, the massacre of Sikhs was being equated with the attacks on the RSS cadres after the killing of Gandhiji and we find Deshmukh advising Sikhs to suffer silently. Everybody knows that the killing of Gandhiji was inspired by the RSS and the Hindutva ideology whereas the common innocent Sikhs had nothing to do with the murder of Indira Gandhi.
 
11. There was not a single sentence in the Deshmukh document demanding, from the then Congress Government at the Centre or the then home minister Narasimha Rao (a Congress leader dear to the RSS, who later silently watched demolition of Babri Masjid by Hindutva goons as the PM of India in 1992) remedial measures for controlling the violence against the minority community. Mind it, that Deshmukh circulated this document on November 8, 1984, and from October 31 to this date, Sikhs were left alone to face the killing gangs. In fact, November 5-10 was the period when the maximum killings of Sikhs took place. Deshmukh was just not bothered about any of this.
 
12. It is generally believed that the Congress cadres were behind this genocide. This may be true but there were other forces too which actively participated in this massacre and whose role has never been investigated. It could be one of the reasons that the actual perpetrators remain unknown. Those who witnessed the genocide were stunned by the swiftness and military precision of the killer/marauding gangs (later on witnessed during the Babri mosque demolition, burning alive of Dr. Graham Steins with his two sons, 2002 pogrom of the Muslims in Gujarat and cleansing of Christians in parts of Orissa) which went on a killing spree killing scores of innocent Sikhs. This, surely, was beyond the capacity of the thugs led by many Congress leaders.
 
The Deshmukh document did not happen in isolation. It represented the real RSS attitude towards the Sikh genocide of 1984. It may be relevant to know here that the RSS cadres did not come forward in defence of the Sikhs. The RSS is very fond of circulating publicity material, especially photographs of its khaki shorts-clad cadres doing social work. For the 1984 violence, they have none. In fact, Deshmukh’s article also made no mention of the RSS cadres going to the rescue of Sikhs under siege. This shows the real intentions of the RSS during the genocide.
 
The RSS English organ, Organizer, in its combined issue dated November 11 and 18, 1984, carried an editorial titled ‘Stunning Loss’ which praised Indira Gandhi in the following words: “It will always be difficult to believe that Indira Gandhi is no more. One had got so used to hearing her myriad voices for so long, that everything looks so blank without her. The violent manner of her death is the most shocking horror story, giving the nation the creeps…It is a case of treacherous fanatics stigmatizing the whole nation by butchering a remarkable specimen of Indian womanhood…She literally served India to the last drop of her blood according to her own lights.” The same editorial ended with the words supporting the newly installed PM, Rajiv Gandhi who “deserves sympathy and consideration”.
 
Organizer also carried a statement of RSS Supremo, Bala Deoras titled ‘Balasaheb condemns assassination, Delhi carnage’ in a single column. He mourned and condemned the carnage but not even once referred to the fact that Sikhs were under attack. For him, it was “infighting in the Hindu Samaj”. He also overlooked the fact that it was not only Delhi where Sikhs were butchered/burnt but in many other parts of India. According to this statement “Swayamsevaks have been instructed to form or help in forming Mohalla Suraksha Samitis,” for restoring peace and victim rehabilitation. However, there are no documents available in the contemporary RSS archives to show how these Samitis functioned. It is a fact that RSS, which is fond of displaying photographs of its cadres doing social work, did not publish any visual of the activity of these Samitis.
 
In the same statement, Deoras, reacting to the assassination of Indira Gandhi, stated, “It is shocking beyond words to express the feelings on the murder of PM Mrs. Indira Gandhi by some fanatic elements. She had been carrying on almost the entire burden of the country since 1966. She was loved and respected not only in this country but all over the world. Her passing away at this critical juncture will create a void in India and also in the world.”
 
According to the above-mentioned Organizer “RSS Sarkyavah, Rajender Singh issued instructions to all the branches in the country to hold a special meeting in their Shakha’s condemning the dastardly murder of the PM and paying homage to the departed soul. He also issued instructions to cancel all public functions to be held by RSS during the period of mourning”. Of course, RSS archives do not contain any instructions from RSS top brass ordering to mourn the Sikh martyrs.
 
RSS against former PM Manmohan Singh’s apology for 1984 Massacre
The RSS continuous downplaying of 1984 Sikh massacre will be clear by the perusal of their charter of demands submitted to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) last July. The senior RSS ideologue, Dina Nath Batra, on behalf of RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas submitted five pages containing the list of items to be removed from school textbooks. Batra demanded that any reference to violence against minorities in the textbooks should be removed which included references to a simple apology tendered by the former PM Manmohan Singh over 1984 violence. It is to be noted that in an apology in Parliament on August 12, 2005, Manmohan Singh, the then PM of India stated:
 
“I have no hesitation in apologizing to the Sikh community. I apologize not only to the Sikh community but to the whole Indian nation because what took place in 1984 is the negation of the concept of nationhood enshrined in our Constitution.”
 
Thus, the search for finding the perpetrators of the Sikh massacre of 1984 continues endlessly. The present RSS/BJP rulers who claim to be co-religionists of Sikhs prove no different from Congress. The only hope is that Indians, who have stakes in continuation of democratic-secular Indian polity, will come forward to force the Indian State to identify and punish the killers.

The post 34 years and counting: No justice for victims of 1984 Sikh genocide appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Twenty-five years ago, in November 1984, as Delhi burned, no Sikh life in the capital was safe. Eminent writer Khushwant Singh sought shelter at the Swedish embassy. Justice SS Chadha of the Delhi high court had to move to the high court complex. His residence was no longer secure.
 

Image Courtesy:  Sondeep Shankar
 

Though the official death toll in Delhi was 2,733, victims’ lawyers submitted a list to the officially appointed Ranganath Misra Commission in 1985 detailing the 3,870 Sikhs who had been killed. Twenty-six persons were arrested by the police on November 1 and 2, 1984; unbelievably however, all of them were Sikhs! So far only nine cases of murder related to the 1984 carnage have led to convictions. Only 20 persons have been convicted for murder in 25 years, a conviction rate of less than one per cent.

The cover-up

Within weeks of the massacre, a fact-finding report prepared by the civil liberties groups, People’s Union for Civil Liberties and People’s Union for Democratic Rights (‘Who are the Guilty’, PUCL-PUDR report, November 1984), named senior Congress leaders on the basis of allegations made by victims who had taken refuge in relief camps. However, no action against the perpetrators was forthcoming. The report listed HKL Bhagat, Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar and Lalit Maken among the Congress leaders active in inciting mobs against the Sikh community. The media had named only one, Dharam Das Shastri, a former MP.

Riding the wave of nationwide sympathy following Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the Congress party swept to power in the general elections held in late December. Her son, Rajiv, failed to isolate the leaders who had been specifically named for their role in the massacre. Far from being politically isolated, these men were instead given tickets for the polls by the party leadership. Worse, they contested and won the election.

Within a short and bloody spell of 48 to 72 hours, nearly 4,000 Sikhs, residents of Delhi, were massacred or burnt to death in cold blood. The central government announced no judicial steps for redressal, to identify and punish the guilty and offer justice to the victim survivors. Within weeks of the assassination and the massacre, the ruling party had switched to election mode and, winning a landslide victory in the polls, came to power with an overwhelming majority in the newly formed Lok Sabha. When Parliament met in January 1985, resolutions were passed condemning the assassination of the former prime minister; another condemned the loss of life in the Bhopal gas tragedy of December 1984. No official condolence motion was moved to mark the massacre of Sikhs. To date, the Indian Parliament has not rectified this shocking lapse.
None of the four politicians named for leading the mobs have so far been punished. Instead, their election to seats in Parliament, from the city where they were accused of leading mobs, signalled brute democratic sanction for the massacres. HKL Bhagat, who was named by several eyewitnesses as leading mobs, was chosen as the Congress party’s candidate from East Delhi, the worst affected area. Of the whopping 76.97 per cent of votes polled, Bhagat cornered a staggering 59.8 per cent (3,86,150 votes as opposed to the BJP’s 73,970). The majority of constituents chose to back a man identified as leading a murderous mob. Was this democratic sanction for carnage?

Similarly, Jagdish Tytler, chosen by the Congress party to contest elections from Sadar in Delhi, won with a whopping 62 per cent of the total 71.83 per cent of votes polled. His opponent, Madan Lal Khurana, won the remaining 35.78 per cent. Lalit Maken, another accused, fielded by the party from South Delhi, received 61.07 per cent of the 64.68 per cent of votes polled, capturing 2,15,898 votes.

Amidst the euphoria of the electoral victory that followed the massacre, these men were also elevated to more powerful positions in government. HKL Bhagat, previously a minister of state, was elevated to cabinet rank and Jagdish Tytler was made minister of state for the first time. Lalit Maken, formerly a councillor, had already been rewarded with a ticket for the polls in which he had won.

By early 1985 the Congress party was in the seat of power, with a 90 per cent majority in the Lok Sabha. Not surprisingly, the new government did not set up a commission of inquiry until forced to do so, five months after the massacre. It was under pressure to initiate talks with the more moderate Akalis (remember the Rajiv-Longowal accord) that Rajiv Gandhi, the new prime minister, was forced to accede to the precondition for talks set by the Sikh leadership – their demand that an inquiry commission be established to investigate the massacre. The Akalis had even threatened a nationwide agitation on April 13, 1985 to press their demand. Two days before the threatened stir, the Congress government finally announced the establishment of an inquiry commission.

A former judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Ranganath Misra, was appointed to head the commission set up in May 1985. But the commission did little to advance the cause of justice as the judge, who was subsequently associated with the Congress party’s human rights cell for several years, in fact covered up the role of the ruling Congress party in the violence, failing to summon top Congress leaders and subject them to the rigours of cross-examination. However, even the Misra Commission was compelled to concede that during the carnage the police refused to register any first information reports (FIRs) that named any policeman or person in authority as the accused:

“It is a fact and the commission on the basis of satisfaction records a finding that first information reports were not received if they implicated the police or any person in authority and the informants were required to delete such allegations from written reports. When oral reports were recorded, they were not taken down verbatim and brief statements dropping out allegations against police or other officials and men in power were written” (Misra Commission report).

The Jain-Banerjee Committee (one of three committees set up on the recommendation of the Misra Commission and which investigated omission in registration of cases) actually instructed the Delhi police in October 1987 to register a case of murder against Sajjan Kumar, who was a Congress MP from the Outer Delhi constituency in 1984, on the basis of an affidavit filed by a riot widow, Anwar Kaur. However, no action was taken until the cover-up was exposed by journalist Manoj Mitta in The Times of India. (An individual named Brahmanand Gupta, who was also named in the affidavit, obtained a stay order against the Jain-Banerjee Committee from the Delhi high court and the court allowed the matter to languish for two years, furthering injustice to the victims.)

The CBI finally registered a case against Sajjan Kumar only in 1990 and completed its investigations two years later. Apart from charging Sajjan Kumar with murder, the CBI also charged him with hate speech, invoking Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code. This required central government sanction before prosecution, which was obtained from the Narasimha Rao government only in June 1994.

In 1991 the Jain-Agarwal Committee, a panel set up to continue the unfinished task of the Jain-Banerjee Committee, had specifically recommended the registration of two cases against HKL Bhagat. The then lieutenant governor of Delhi, Markandey Singh, accepted the committee’s recommendation but Bhagat made a representation before him claiming that he had already been exonerated by the Misra Commission, a plea that was finally turned down on the grounds that the commission had not examined the matter beyond a prima facie look at the case. Despite the firm stand taken by the lieutenant governor, for five years no case was registered against Bhagat at all. It was only in 1996, when the Congress party was out of power, that the police registered the two cases in question.

The Jain-Agarwal Committee had in 1991 also recommended the registration of cases against other politicians and Markandey Singh had ordered the registration of those cases as well. But in a Machiavellian ploy, the Rao government actively prevented the registration of the stronger cases against politicians whilst registering those that relied on flimsier evidence thus ensuring that justice was not done. Manoj Mitta and HS Phoolka, co-authors of When a Tree Shook Delhi (Roli Books, 2007), exposed this as a government sham. They dug out, in affidavit form, the original testimonies of witnesses against all these politicians, demonstrating that the authorities, by replacing them with weak and false testimonies, had suppressed the honest, unambiguous and strong testimonies on oath.

Another panel appointed on the recommendation of the Misra Commission, the Kapur-Mittal Committee, which investigated acts of omission and commission by police officers, had identified delinquent police officials. A report submitted in 1990 by one of the two committee members, Kusum Lata Mittal, recommended various degrees of punishment for 72 police officials, including six IPS officers. But, on one flimsy pretext or another, the government has so far not taken any action against any of those indicted.

It was against this dismal background of legal deception and failure to punish the perpetrators that the Vajpayee government took the momentous decision in December 1999 to accept the demand for a fresh judicial inquiry into the 1984 carnage. In Parliament, the members of all political parties, including the Congress party, now under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi, passed a resolution supporting the government’s decision in this regard. The subsequent appointment of the Justice GT Nanavati Commission in May 2000, nearly 16 years after the killings, was an unprecedented development. The commission submitted its report in February 2005.

Through the findings of the Nanavati Commission, many eminent persons have for the first time been able to put on record how, during the massacre of 1984, the then union home minister, PV Narasimha Rao, and the then lieutenant governor of Delhi, PG Gavai, failed to take constitutionally binding and firm measures when urged to call in the army. Several depositions before the Nanavati Commission also provided fresh evidence against Congress leaders HKL Bhagat and Sajjan Kumar, reiterating their role in the violence. Analysis of the evidence before the commission also brought to light an important pattern/strategy followed by the police authorities during that period, which was to first disarm Sikhs and then arrest them. The Kusum Lata Mittal report, which revealed police complicity at the highest level, was also revealed for the first time through documents placed before the Nanavati Commission.

Communalism Combat has over the years revisited the 1984 carnage in its commitment as a journal to examine and illustrate the breakdown of the rule of law within a functioning, vibrant democracy. The 1984 Sikh massacre in the nation’s capital was also the first full-fledged anti-minority pogrom in independent India. That justice has not been done and perpetrators among policemen and politicians have not been brought to book is a comment on our agencies and institutions. We dedicate this issue to the pursuit of justice even as we pay homage to the victims and salute the grit and courage of the survivors.

The post Remembering 1984 – The nightmare endures appeared first on SabrangIndia.

“Is anyone there?”

“Is anyone there to listen to my story?”

“Is anyone there who can give me justice?”

“I’m Gursewak Singh.”

“I’m the grandson of a famous freedom fighter who had served a life sentence for fighting against the British invaders who had ruled our country.”

“I’ve been on this wheelchair for the last 25 years.”

“We were a happy family too. I had a hard-working father who drove a taxi so that we could eat. I had a loving mother who took good care of us. I had a brother who was recruited by the army. He wanted to serve his country. I had a sister who was going to be married. But everything is gone now. My family, my home, my limbs, everything is lost.”

“Is anyone listening?”

“I want justice.”

“Why are you yelling?”

“What do you want?”

“Who are you?”

“Don’t you know me?”

“I’m the leader of this country?”

“Tell me what I can do for you.”

“Oh! So you are the leader of the ruling party.”

“You cannot give me justice.”

“Well, I have the power.”

“Tell me. What’s your problem?”

“My family was murdered 25 years ago.”

“My father was a taxi-driver. My mother was a simple housewife. My brother was recruited by the army. He wanted to serve his nation. My sister was going to be married. All of them were murdered one by one.”

“Why were they murdered?”

“Because of their identity.”

“I don’t get it.”

“My father and my brother wore turbans. They were easy to identify.”

“But why would anyone kill them for wearing turbans?”

“This is what happened to them, sir.”

“The killers were targeting anyone who wore a turban.”

“Why?”

“Because two turbaned men had killed the prime minister. Her followers came screaming – you have killed our mother! They dragged my father out of our house and roasted him alive. My father kept pleading for his life. He reminded the crowd how our religious gurus had sacrificed their lives so that others could practise their faith. He had tried to reason that his father was imprisoned for fighting against the British empire. But no one cared. They stripped my mother and sister and burnt them too. My brother showed them his identity card but they did not listen. He took out his sword but he was overpowered by the goons and lynched. Even the policemen did not come to rescue us.”

“Oh I see. You are talking about those two treacherous bodyguards who killed our leader. Hmm… This was bound to happen. After all, they had deceived the person they were supposed to protect.”

“Ha!!! That’s why I said that you can’t give me justice.”

“You are biased.”

“Excuse me! Your leaders are biased too.”

“Excuse me! Who are my leaders?”

“Those leaders who celebrated her death. They had distributed sweets. This had angered the supporters of my party.”

“But that was not my fault. That was not the fault of my family. Why did we have to pay the price?”

“It was collateral damage. My sympathies are with you.”

“No. I don’t need them. I don’t need anyone’s mercy. I want justice.”

“Well… It’s an old issue. Our prime minister is dead. Her killers were hanged. People have forgotten and forgiven everything that happened in the past.”

“Sorry. But I have not. I have lost everything. So how can I?”

“That’s history.”

“So why do you remember this dead leader of yours? Why do you waste public money on her memorial service every year?”

“Let’s be fair. She was a prime minister.”

“Her killers were hanged. But the killers of my family are still moving around. Is that fair?”

“Stop sulking! Now our party has appointed a turbaned prime minister. What else do you need?”

“When my people were targeted, the country had a turbaned president. What difference did it make? Your party has failed us.”

“You cannot blame my party for that. We believe in secularism. It was a natural reaction of the people on the street.”

“No, it was not. Why did this madness happen only in the territories governed by your party then? What more evidence do you need to prove the complicity of the authorities?”

“Why did your people kill our leader?”

“They were not my people. My family had nothing to do with their ideology. Your leader had ordered an army attack on our holy shrine. Her bodyguards had avenged that military operation. She herself was responsible for her death.”

“After all, your people were spreading terrorism from that shrine. They were killing innocents too because of their identity. What choice did she have?”

“Why the hell are you trying to prove that they were my people? My family had nothing to do with terrorism. My grandfather was a true patriot. My father had always voted for your party. My brother wanted to serve the nation. But your people killed both for no fault of theirs!”

“How come you are alive?”

“I was the youngest in the family. My mother had hidden me in a room from where I could see them being burnt alive and lynched helplessly. I wish I had died too. They burnt the house later. The lower part of my body was roasted. My neighbours saved me and sent me to the refugee camp. Since then, my lower limbs don’t work any more.”

“Okay. Let’s settle this. What do you want? You want money? You want a job?”

“I want justice.”

“That’s what I am trying to do.”

“Can you bring back my family?”

“That’s impossible.”

“Can you hang the people who had killed my family?”

“Evidence?”

“Can you punish your party colleagues who had incited the goons?”

“Prove that.”

“Can you give me a gun?”

“What do you mean?”

“I want to kill all those men who had destroyed my family.”

“I am talking peace and you are talking like a terrorist.”

“Then don’t let me become one. If you can’t do justice then let me get instant justice. Your government can call me whatever it feels like later, terrorist, criminal or anything like that.”

“It’s no use talking to you. I better take my leave.”

“Yeah. That’s better. You leave right now.”

“I want justice.”

“Is anyone listening?”

“Why are you beating your head against a wall?”

“Who is it?”

“I’m the leader of your community.”

“I’m here to help you.”

“Very brave of you! You want instant justice, eh? We’ll give you whatever you want.”

“How?”

“You want an AK-47? Or would you like to become a suicide bomber?

“It’s no use begging for justice from the people who have killed your relatives.”

“Are you a separatist?”

“I am surprised that you are calling me that. I’m a freedom fighter like your grandfather. We want a homeland for people like us. We want a place on this earth where all the turbaned people can live with dignity without any fear of the majority community.”

“No, you are not like him! You want a theocratic state. My grandfather fought for a secular country. His organisation wanted the people to set aside religious differences to fight against foreign rule.”

“Ha!!! What a secular country it is where your parents and siblings were murdered just because of their identity! Wow!”

“If my country has gone to the dogs, it’s not because of my grandfather. It’s because of the wrong policies of our leaders.”

“How naïve you are! Despite losing everything at the hands of the state machinery you are still calling it your country.”

“I am not dumb. I only want justice.”

“Justice from whom? You are counting on people who have murdered your family. The majority community that killed your dad, your mom, your brother and sister will never give you justice. Come on, wake up.”

“I am awake. You cannot blame a group of people for this. It was the people next door who had helped me. I wouldn’t have been alive without the support of the majority community.”

“You are a moron. You are just seeing who had helped you reach the relief camp but you are forgetting who destroyed your family.”

“Of course I am not. Why did this not happen to the people of our community in the states that were not ruled by a particular political party?”

“I am clearer on the subject than you are. You want to make it appear as an us versus them conflict whereas it was a state-sponsored massacre.”

“Well… The state belongs to the majority community.”

“If you want justice then you have to fight for a homeland where you can live in peace.”

“You are saying this because you have not lost anything like me. You are just taking advantage of the issue to justify your cause.”

“Who forced us to seek a homeland? We have been victimised since 1947 when our country got freedom. While most of the freedom fighters belonged to our community, including your grandfather, we were treated like second-class citizens.”

“You must check your facts before making such statements. People from other communities had also participated in the freedom struggle. Barring what happened to us 25 years ago, we have never lived like second-class citizens. We have many success stories to tell. We have been better placed despite the small size of our population, compared to the large number of poor belonging to the majority community.”

“You sound very pro-establishment. Why were we not given a separate homeland at the time of independence? The Hindus have got India and the Muslims have got Pakistan; what have we got, sir?”

“You can see for yourself what is happening in Pakistan. The Muslims are fighting among themselves now because of sectarian divisions. I do agree that the Hindu extremists are trying to turn India into a Hindu state but they are also targeting their own Hindu brothers in the name of language and caste.”

“But the police never go after the Hindus; they only target the minorities for any damn terrorist incident. They had stormed our holiest shrine. Why?”

“Given my experience, I can say that certainly the state is biased somewhere but why did you people fortify a place of worship? Why did you kill innocent Hindus? Those killings have made us vulnerable in other parts of the country.”

“Oh, come on. We never killed innocents. The Indian agents did all the bad things to defame our movement. As far as fortifying the temple is concerned, our guru taught us to use the sword when all other means to get justice fail. I am just reminding you of your duty as his follower.”
“Our guru also sent his sons to the battlefield whereas you people have sent your children abroad. Why don’t you use your kids to kill your political enemies instead of asking others to risk their lives?”

“I think there’s no point in arguing with you. If you have chosen to live like a slave, that’s fine. I better take my leave.”

“Yes please. You leave and let me handle this struggle myself.”

“I am not a separatist and I don’t want to be one. But I need justice and the state is not listening. Those who are promising justice in the name of freedom are enemies of the people’s unity. I neither want to become a terrorist nor can I take this continued humiliation anymore. More than symbolic gestures and alms, I need dignified closure. I want the state to punish the guilty. If not now then when?”

(Gurpreet Singh is a broadcaster with Radio India in Vancouver.)
 

The post Insaaf (Justice) – A short story appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Delivering judgement in a 1984 anti-Sikh communal massacre case, a Delhi trial court observed, “After the assassination of late Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984, anti-Sikh riots broke out in different areas of the capital, killing thousands of Sikhs. [The] law and order machinery was completely paralysed because of inaction/connivance of the police… In the name of investigation a farce was carried out… It seems the prosecution expected that the trial will be equally a farce and cases would be summarily disposed of thereby drawing a curtain on the legal drama.”¹

Image Courtesy: Sondeep Shankar

Today we are confronted with a peculiar schism where the truth of who are the perpetrators and masterminds of the communal pogrom of 1984 is part of public knowledge but it invariably fails to translate into proof beyond reasonable doubt in courts of law.

In the aftermath of the anti-Sikh pogrom, victims have approached the criminal justice system, seeking punishment for the guilty. The consequent judicial verdicts demonstrate that wanton killings and looting in communal pogroms invariably end in acquittals, barring a few rare convictions.

Why this pattern of impunity

The post Twenty-five years later – No justice for the 1984 survivors appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Supreme Court on Monday sought a comprehensive status report on the probe into the 1984 anti-Sikh riot cases being investigated by the SIT set up in 2014.

A bench of Justice Dipak Misra and Justice R Banumathi sought the report as petitioner S Gurlad Singh Kahlon told the court that the Special Investigation Team has utterly failed in carrying out the probe.

The Centre earlier told the court that further investigation was on in 21 out of the total of 221 cases. 

The court has adjourned the matter for next hearing on February 20.

The post SC wants status report on anti-Sikh riot’s SIT probe appeared first on SabrangIndia.