Violence And Venality In Delhi

Patwant Singh

This excerpt from the book "The Sikhs", first published in the UK by John Murray (Publishers) Ltd., in 1999, shows how a unit of the Indian Army's 15th Sikh Light Infantry (LI) consisting of 1600 soldiers and officers, was withdrawn after a few hours patrolling in the Indian capital. This was obviously done to prevent it from stopping the looting, torching and killing of Sikhs and their homes and businesses in the aftermath of Mrs. Indira Gandhi's assassination. Even now, sixteen years after those genocidal events - the main perpetrators of the crime are still free, still exercise enormous influence in the Congress Party. Except for a few, hundreds are still to be apprehended and punished. Not one person has been hung for the officially-sponsored massacres which took over 3000 Sikh lives.

The Sikhs will be published in the US and Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Incorporated in April 2000.

Who was the intelligence officer whose report to the government led to the army's withdrawal? No enquiry has revealed the answers. This point was driven home by a Delhi lawyer, Harvinder Singh Phoolka - who has persevered for years in his efforts to bring the guilty to book - in a recent letter to the Chief Minister of Delhi: 'The people who are responsible for withdrawing the army which was patrolling the roads of Delhi on the morning of 1 November 1984 - and effectively controlling the violence - and ordering this army unit consisting of 1600 soldiers and officers to remain confined to barracks, were to a large extent responsible for the flare-up of violence which assumed such great magnitude. These persons are liable to be brought to book and punished for their misdeeds.'

Had the army been kept in place, casualties would have been minimal. Was this Sikh LI unit withdrawn to facilitate the killings? And why wasn't Major Sandhu's unit replaced, a lapse which gave the mobs enough time to do their work with the tacit - and often active - support of the Delhi police? Phoolka insists that the category of people who paralysed the law and order machinery but 'remained behind the scenes while taking such important decisions' must be treated as co-conspirators, 'and tried for murder along with other accused.'

The government of New Delhi neither stopped the killings nor brought the killers to trial. Instead, it not only confined the Sikh LI to barracks, but subsequently gave a false declaration both before parliament and the Misra Commission to the effect that no army units were available to it on 1 November. Even the report of the Misra Commission (of which more later) corrects this falsehood by recording the fact that the force was available to the government from early morning of 1 November.

Even as the world's media, assembled in the capital in the aftermath of Mrs. Gandhi's assassination, watched the horror unfold, the government allowed the blood-letting to continue. John Fraser in Canada's Globe and Mail described how 'for three horrific nights and four days, the violence was allowed to proceed... by which time the worst atrocities had been committed.' As for setting the wrong right, Fraser wrote that 'hardly had the country recovered from Mrs. Gandhi's death and the ensuing bloodshed when the Bhopal chemical disaster struck ... While Mr. Gandhi [who succeeded his mother] is prepared for the most exhaustive inquiry possible to examine the Bhopal disaster, because the primary focus of culpability is on a U.S. company, the Delhi atrocities... would inevitably point a devastating finger at his own party and at the dark side of Indian society.'

Which brings us to yet another aspect of these events. Heedless of the excesses, the battering India's image was receiving abroad, and the brutality of the capital's police force, the government ordered no commission of inquiry to investigate the events. Seeing its inaction, a group of individuals got together with the intention of making up for government's indifference. This is how they explained their concern: 'The mosaic of India's varied people and cultures is the very foundation of its strength, but if the bond of mutual tolerance and respect is fractured by an orgy of violence against any community, the unity and integrity of the entire structure is gravely imperilled. Such is the situation which faces our country today.'

India's former foreign secretary, Rajeshwar Dayal, was the driving force behind the setting up of the five-member 'Citizen's Commission' which was headed by the retired chief justice of India with the former foreign, commonwealth, home and defence secretaries of the government of India as its members. All of them non-Sikhs, their solidarity reaffirmed India's founding principle of secularism which the Congress government had treated with contempt. The concern of right-minded Hindus and Muslims, and their efforts to uncover the truth, proved that the ruling party's indecencies had not affected the country as a whole.

The government's hostility towards the Commission was expressed in various ways. It refused to allow it access to official documents, and the prime minister and home minister declined to meet it. A note to "suggest preventive corrective and retributive action; and propose ameliorative measures to restore public confidence' sent to home minister P.V. Narasimha Rao was not even acknowledged by him. The same politician, who as home minister had not stopped the carnage, would in a few years become India's prime minister.

In the preamble to its report published on 18 January 1985, the Commission noted: 'The incredible and abysmal failure of the administration and the police; the instigation by dubious political elements; the equivocal role of the information media; and the inertia, apathy and indifference of the official machinery; all lead to the inferences that follow.' The report's inferences and recommendations were buried by the government. As were other excellent reports like Who are the Guilty? by the Peoples' Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and the Peoples' Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), Truth about Delhi Violence by Citizens for Democracy, and 1984 Carnage in Delhi by the PUDR. When the latter filed a writ petition in Delhi High Court seeking the Court's directions for the setting up of a judicial commission of enquiry into the events, government opposed the petition, which was eventually dismissed by a division bench of the Court on the ground that it was for the executive to take a decision in the matter.

The one-man Commission that was finally appointed - following a statesmanlike Punjab Accord (formally called the Memorandum of Settlement) reached between Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sant Harchand Singh Longowal on 24 July 1985 - fell just short of farce. To begin with the appointee, Justice Ranganath Misra, a judge of India's Supreme Court, seemed conscious of the Congress government's sensitivities. He was later appointed India's next chief justice. His moves looked carefully considered. His attitude towards human rights groups who were representing the victims was not helpful. The Citizens' Justice Committee (CJC) and the voluntary group Nagrik Ekta Manch who were allowed to participate, withdrew, complaining about the apparent arbitrariness of his procedures. The CJC, incidentally, was headed by a former chief justice of India with several retired judges, eminent lawyers and outstanding public figures on it.

Not only did the Delhi administration defend the accused before the Commission, but Congressmen - in and out of power - have even been accused of trying to obstruct justice. A Report of the Advisory Committee to the Chief Minister of Delhi has this to say of the affidavits for the accused: 'Most of the affidavits in favour of the accused were cyclostyled in identical proformas on which only the particulars of the deponent were filled in by hand. Most of the deponents of these affidavits who were summoned by the Commission did not appear to support their affidavits. Some others who appeared, disowned their purported affidavits.'

When the CJC wanted to cross-examine the persons who had filed these -affidavits, Misra turned down its request, denying it also the right to take copies of such affidavits, to examine statements of witnesses summoned at the CJC's request but examined in its absence, and to inspect records produced at the behest of the CJC. Protesting against the denial of these rights which it maintained was in contravention of some of the basic principles of law, the CJC withdrew from the proceedings.

The Government received the Misra Commission's report in August 1986, and took six months to place it before parliament in February 1987, a full 27 months after the killings. A weak and vapid report, it let key Congress figures off the hook and characteristically recommended the setting up of three more committees: the first to ascertain the death toll in the riots, the second to enquire into the conduct of the police, the third to recommend the registration of cases and monitor investigations. The third committee spawned two more committees plus an enquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). When one of these two, the Poti-Rosha Committee, recommended 30 cases for prosecution including one against Sajjan Kumar, Congress MP, and the CBI sent a team to arrest him on 11 September 1990, a mob held the team captive for more than four hours! According to the CBI's subsequent affidavit filed in court, 'the Delhi Police far from trying to disperse the mob sought an assurance from the CBI that he [Sajjan Kumar] would not be arrested.' The CBI also 'disclosed that [another committee's] file relating to the case [against him] ... was found in Sajjan Kumar's house.' The MP was given 'anticipatory bail while the CBI team was being held captive' by his henchmen.

Justice Misra became the Chief justice of the Supreme Court and after retirement chairman of the National Human Rights Commission; the accused MPs, except one, were again given Congress tickets to stand for parliament; one of them, H.K.L. Bhagat, became a cabinet minister; three accused police officers were promoted and placed in high positions. As for punishment of the guilty, only five persons were given the death sentence - still to be carried out - for the murder of 2,733 persons, around 150 persons were jailed, and none of the accused MPs and prominent Congressmen has been punished. The government has not conducted any investigation into the withdrawal of the Sikh Light Infantry on 1 November 1984.

"The Sikhs", determined to see those they believe to be guilty punished, continue to press for justice although fully aware of -the fact that in India too, as Solzhenitsyn wrote about his country, 'the lie has become not just a moral category, but a pillar of the state.'