Bhagat Incited Mob To Kill Sikhs: Eyewitness

Rediff.com. August 30, 2001

Senior Congress leader and former Union minister H K L Bhagat had incited a mob to kill Sikhs in east Delhi following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, an eyewitness alleged on Thursday before the Justice Nanavati Commission probing the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

Taxi driver Gurmeet Singh, who was then residing in Vishvakarma Park in Laxmi Nagar area of east Delhi, said he knew Bhagat 'closely and personally' as he had been a staunch Congress supporter and that Bhagat even engaged his vehicle during elections.

He said at between 1100 and 1130 hours (IST) on November 1, 1984, a white Ambassador car stopped at Yamuna Pushta. About 150-200 persons on motorcycles, scooters and tempos carrying lathis, sariyas (sharp-edged weapons) etc and raising anti-Sikh slogans were following the car.

He said Bhagat alighted from the said Ambassador car. On seeing him, policemen standing nearby saluted him, Gurmeet Singh told the Commission.

Pointing towards us, Bhagat instigating the police and the mob to attack the Sikhs, he said.

Immediately thereafter, the police came towards the Gurdwara, where the Sikhs had gathered, and 'asked us to surrender our kirpans (symbolic swords) and go inside the Gurdwara', he said.

"We did not surrender our kirpans as those were the only weapons we had for our defence. But we went inside," he said.

"After some time, the mob attacked us. But all of us came out of the Gurdwara and challenged the mob. On seeing this, the mob ran away," Gurmeet Singh, who has since shifted to Mohali in Punjab, told the Commission.

Gurmeet Singh told the Commission that the attacks continued throughout 1st and 2nd November 1984 'but due to our vigilance and determination to defend ourselves, we repulsed the mob'.

He said he learnt only on November 3, 1984 that his uncle Rattan Singh was burnt alive along with another person in their taxi while they were on their way to Khureji in east Delhi.

He alleged that the policemen did not take any action to stop the mob, but instead they were inciting people to attack Sikhs.

Earlier, Gurmeet said when the riots broke out on October 31, 1984, he was on his way to Vasant Kunj from Inter State Bus Terminus (ISBT) to drop some passengers.

"When I came to know that the vehicles of Sikhs were being burnt and they were being persecuted and killed, I was very scared," he said.

He said he took his taxi to R K Puram and parked it there. Though attacked by a mob, 'I somehow managed to reach my place', he said.

Two other witnesses also narrated their experience during the riots.

Sixty-four-year-old Mohinder Kaur, who lost four members of her family, including her husband and a son, said the mob broke into her house on November 1, 1984, reached the roof, threw the victims down and set them on fire.

"I, my two sons, my sister-in-law and her son hid ourselves in the loft of my house," she said.