The Crime Committed By Centre Governments Openly In Active Connivance With Punjabi And Sikh Leadership So Far!
Highlights By: Balbir Singh Sooch, Advocate, Ludhiana
1984: Who are the Guilty?
The Crime Committed By Centre Governments Openly In Active Connivance With Punjabi And Sikh Leadership So Far! “Captain Amarinder Singh names BJP, RSS leaders involved in 1984 riots-Sikh Genocide-November 1984: Daily Pioneer:
“Amarinder names BJP, RSS leaders involved in 1984 riots: Saturday, 08 February 2014 | PNS | Chandigarh: Coming to the rescue of “under-attack” Congress party for allegedly dubbed as the architect of 1984 anti-Sikh riots, Punjab’s former Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Friday revealed the names of “few BJP and RSS leaders” for their alleged involvement in November 1984 massacre.
Senior Congress leader reminded that a total of 14 FIRs were registered “against 49 BJP-RSS leaders for their role in anti-Sikh riots of 1984”. At the same time, Capt Amarinder questioned Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal for his silence over BJP, RSS leaders’ role in the massacre. Coming down heavily on Badal for raising the issue for “partisan gains” and unnecessarily targeting Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, Capt Amarinder targeted Badal by claiming that Badal had run away from the situation.
Capt Amarinder said that on May 26, 1984, a meeting was held at a Delhi Guest House where Badal along with two of his colleagues met three Central Ministers. “While two of his colleagues left for Punjab immediately after the meeting, Badal went into hiding and later it was revealed that he had hid himself in his Bazpur farmhouse in Uttar Pradesh, (now in Uttarakhand),” he added.
He added, on June 1, 1984, the police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) cordoned off the Golden Temple. Capt Amarinder questioned Badal as to why he failed “to carry the commitment he had made, along with his other colleagues, that they will physically confront the Army if it entered the Darbar Sahib”.
Also the permanent invitee of Congress Working Committee (CWC), Capt Amarinder disclosed that Badal had even refused to take the phone calls of the then BBC journalists Mark Tully and Satish Jacob, who can stand testimony to this fact. Capt Amarinder told Badal, “The way nobody can accuse your son Sukhbir, who at that time was a young man studying in a foreign university, for his acts of omission and commission. You cannot ask the Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi to apologise for Operation Bluestar as he was just 13-years-old at that time.”
“Rahul Gandhi in an open hearted manner had said that Congress people may have been involved in Delhi riots and you have been insisting on their names to be provided, I can give you the names as I was in Delhi from November 1 to 3 after riots broke out on the night of October 31, 1984, and visited all the refugees who had taken shelter in various gurdwaras in Delhi,” said Capt Amarinder adding that the “names I heard were HKl Bhagat, Dharam Dass Shastri, Arjun Dass, lalit Maken and Sajjan Kumar”.
He said, while the first four are no longer in this world, Sajjan Kumar’s trial is at its fag end and everybody must wait for the court verdict. “At the same time, let me tell you, I heard the names of several BJP and RSS leaders like Ram Kumar Jain, Pritam Singh, Ram Chander Gupta to name a few, who were involved in riots, but you have maintained a sheepish silence about their involvement just because they are your alliance partners and your survival is dependent on them,” he said.
Asserting that Badal was in the habit of raking up the issue at the time of elections to promote himself, he said that Badal had always exploited the sentiments of innocent people and then shirked away from his responsibility. Capt Amarinder had resigned from Parliament and from Congress as a protest against Army action during Operation Bluestar in 1984, and joined SAD. After serving as Minister in SAD-BJP State Government, Capt Amarinder broke away from SAD, and formed a splinter group named SAD (Panthic) which later merged with the Congress”. Daily Pioneer: Amarinder names BJP, RSS leaders involved in 1984 riots-Sikh Genocide-November 1984:
To Know Harvinder Singh Phoolka : Punjab Aam Aadmi Party leader and anti-Sikh riots lawyer, Harvinder Singh Phoolka has resigned from the party, he said on Twitter on Thursday, adding that he had handed over his resignation to AAP chief and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. “I have resigned from AAP & handed over resignation to Kejriwal ji today, 03-Jan-2019: HT: BJP: The President, Shri Ram Nath Kovind (right) presenting the Padma Shri Award to Harvinder Singh Phoolka (left), in New Delhi on March 16, 2019. (The award may be conditional, first to resign from AAP and then work for BJP}
“Phoolka- Harvinder Singh Phoolka ‘In 2014 Harvinder Singh Phoolka joined Aam Aadmi Party. In 2017 he won from Dakha Assembly constituency following which he was appointed the Leader of Opposition to Punjab Legislative Assembly’ being used by BJP to level baseless allegations against Capt Amarinder –Congress: By : Babushahi Bureau: CHANDIGARH, November 21,2015 : The Congress today rejected HS Phoolkaâ’s charges against Capt Amarinder Singh, saying he (Capt Amarinder) did not need any certificate from anybody, much less people like him (Phoolka), to justify his credentials in watching the interests of Punjab including the Sikh community. They also strongly denied that he was trying to shield anyone involved in the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 in the aftermath of the assassination of Ms Indira Gandhi.
Capt Amarinder has already revealed the names of those, he was told by the riot victims themselves, were involved in the killings, they pointed out. In a joint statement senior party leaders and legislators including Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Rana Gurjeet Singh, Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa and Kewal Singh Dhillon asserted that Capt Amarinder’s credentials were too strong to need any clarification from anyone.
The Congress leaders maintained that having been rejected by the AAP for his Chief Ministerial ambitions, Phoolka was now trying to warm up to the BJP and had started levelling baseless charges against Capt Amarinder. They asked him as why he was silent over the role of RSS as over 100 workers were named in the FIRs for their involvement in the anti-Sikh riots”. Babushahi
“Captain Amarinder Singh: SAD supported farm laws initially, played double game: They (SAD) are now running here and there pretending to do a lot for farmers but they have nothing to say as to where they were when farmers needed them,” Capt. said. Written by Anju Agnihotri Chaba: Nawanshahr | September 14, 2021 06:34 IST: The Indian Express
“Akali Dal and Congress trade charges over farm laws: Sidhu is taking up the farm laws to cover up his failures, alleges SAD leader Daljeet Cheema: September 15, 2021 07:55 pm pm IST - CHANDIGARH: SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: THE HINDU
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and Congress leaders on September 15, 2021 exchanged sharp words on the three controversial farm laws “.THE HINDU
“Chief Minister Amarinder Singh launched a direct attack on the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) for supporting three controversial Agricultural laws passed by the Centre Monday and said that Congress was the only party which had rejected these laws first when they were in the form of ordinances. Written by Anju Agnihotri Chaba: Nawanshahr | September 14, 2021 06:34 IST: The Indian Express
“The Akalis of supporting the farm laws and then honouring the sentiments of farmers, ended the SAD-BJP tie-up as nau-mass da rishta — like nail and skin”
http://www.sapulse.com/new_
https://thekhalsa.org/frame.
“Eyeing Lok Sabha polls BJP on the offensive in Punjab: DH: After losing the Punjab polls badly, the BJP is making a big push, from street politics to top-level meetings with the Sikh community leaders to make its presence felt Anand Mishra DHNS Last Updated 07 May 2022, 08:20 IST
After losing the Punjab polls badly, the BJP is making a big push, from street politics to top-level meetings with the Sikh community leaders to make its presence felt in a state, where for decades, it was a fringe-margin player”. DH
“Punjab Polls 2022: J.P. Nadda Rakes Up 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots To Attack Congress: By: ABP News Bureau: “During the 1984 riots in Delhi, Congress leaders used to say “when a big tree falls, the earth shakes”. They had their hands stained with blood,” said Nadda in Balachaur, ANI reported. | Updated at : 12 Feb 2022 01:41 PM (IST): Edited By: Amit Shankar: By: ABP News Bureau
Punjab Polls 2022: J.P. Nadda Rakes Up 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots To Attack Congress Punjab Polls 2022: J.P. Nadda Rakes Up 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots To Attack Congress: BJP chief J.P. Nadda. (File Photo: PTI)
New Delhi: Raking up the 1984 anti-Sikh riots to lambast the Congress in the run-up to the Punjab Assembly elections, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president J.P. Nadda on Saturday said the grand old party brought such a situation where "Sikh brothers and sisters were killed".
“During the 1984 riots in Delhi, Congress leaders used to say “when a big tree falls, the earth shakes”. They had their hands stained with blood,” said Nadda in Balachaur, ANI reported”.
“Delhi 1984: India's Congress party still struggling to escape the past-BBC: Published: 18 February 2014: Santok Singh's gurdwara in Trilokpuri remains empty during his evening prayer session: By Andrew North: South Asia correspondent @NorthAndrew: BBC
Santok Singh's melancholy tones hang in the air as he reads from the Granth, the Sikh holy book.
But his gurdwara or temple is empty, even though his evening prayer session in the Delhi suburb of Trilokpuri is well underway.
It's been like this every night for years, he says, a symbol of a once thriving Sikh neighbourhood decimated by the scourge of sudden communal violence, which plagues India to this day.
The narrow lanes of Trilokpuri saw the worst bloodshed during the anti-Sikh riots that swept the capital in November 1984 sparked by the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two of her Sikh bodyguards.
Today, Singh's gurdwara is known as the Temple of Martyrs.
At least 3,000 Sikhs were killed in Delhi, and members of the ruling Congress party were widely accused of encouraging the violence.
The spectre of 1984 is all the greater because no-one of any significance has been brought to justice.
The issue is back on the agenda again as India approaches general elections this spring, with many Sikhs saying they intend to vote for the country's newest political movement - the Aam Admi party - because it has promised a renewed investigation into the massacre.
Indian Sikh women hold photographs of riot victims as they protest the acquittal of ruling Congress party leader Sajjan Kumar, in New Delhi, India, 7 May 2013
Sikh women hold photographs of riot victims during a protest in Delhi
"People thought they'd be safe inside the gurdwara" says Santok Singh. The temple is between blocks 30 and 32 in Trilokpuri, the epicentre of the violence.
"But the wall wasn't very high then and the mob came from all sides.
"They killed anyone they could lay their hands on - men, women and children. This courtyard was full of bodies."
Delhi police were accused not just of failing to stop the violence but aiding it.
Electoral records were reportedly used in some cases to identify where Sikh families lived.
When the Indian army finally restored order four days later, at least 400 Sikhs lay dead in Trilokpuri, with hundreds more injured.
The November 1984 riots were the nadir of a cycle of violence that had seen Sikh separatists occupying the Golden Temple in Amritsar, followed by Mrs Gandhi ordering the disastrous Operation Bluestar attack on the complex leaving hundreds dead.
A British special forces officer advised the Indian government in the early planning stages, it has recently emerged.
It was the assault on the Golden Temple that provoked Mrs Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards to turn on her on 31 October 1984.
Refugees
What used to be one of Delhi's biggest Sikh neighbourhoods emptied out. Today there's only a handful of Sikh families left - with Santok Singh's children helping him in his lonely task of keeping the gurdwara going.
They seem almost grateful to have visitors to offer sweets to when the prayer session is over.
Tens of thousands of Sikhs became refugees in their own city and many ended up in the run-down district of Tilak Nagar, on the far western side of Delhi.
Image taken by the BBC's Andrew North shows children playing in the streets in Tilak Nagar
Many people living in the run-down area of Tilak Nagar lost relatives in the massacre
Like dense tree creepers, multiple illegal electrical connections lead from the lamp-posts to the crumbling apartment block where Attar Kaur has lived with many other Trilokpuri Sikhs since 1984.
Inside, a fading photograph of her and her husband looks down from a bare plaster wall.
"We were sad when we first heard of Indira Gandhi's death" she says. "But how could I imagine she would also take my husband with her?"
In all, she lost 11 close relatives in Trilokpuri, including her brother and three nephews.
"A Muslim neighbour gave me and my children shelter," Mrs Kaur remembers.
"He said the mob won't touch children, but when we finally went out we saw dead Sikh children everywhere, still burning like wood."
Her description is a chilling echo of the words that have come to define what's often called a pogrom.
Accusations
"When a great tree falls, the earth is bound to shake."
So Rajiv Gandhi is reported to have responded as violence took hold after his mother's death and accounts began to emerge of Congress party members leading the mobs.
The most prominent figure facing such accusations is Jagdish Tytler, a former Delhi MP and minister.
Black and white photographs around his living room show him as one of the Gandhi family's most loyal and trusted confidants.
A court in Delhi has ordered the reopening of the case against Jagdish Tytler
One shows him chatting amiably in a group that includes Indira Gandhi just days before her death, alongside a younger Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul - the leaders of today's Congress party.
Mr Tytler denies any role in the 1984 riots and told the BBC he was actually with Indira Gandhi's body in mourning at the key time when he's accused of instigating violence. Sikh activists, he said, had framed him.
"They created such an impression that one day my daughter asked me 'Papa, have you killed Sikhs'," he told the BBC.
"Can you imagine how shamed we felt that if my own daughter can think like this?"
In March 2009, India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) gave him a so-called 'clean chit', clearing him of any wrongdoing.
But just weeks later, after an ensuing outcry, his own party dropped him and another key figure as candidates for the general elections that year.
And last year, a Delhi court ordered the CBI to investigate the allegations against Mr Tytler once more. The case is pending.
Stalemate: That was a small victory for Harvinder Singh Phoolka, the Sikh lawyer who has spearheaded efforts to bring the ringleaders of 1984 to justice. But he says the string of inquiries and commissions since then have been "a farce".
"Whenever any victim named a Congress leader, or a police officer, they didn't register the case" he says. "If they did register the case, they would make them delete that name."
Youths burn vehicles and debris during riots in Ahmadabad, Gujarat, on 28 February, 2002.
Rioting by Hindus in the state of Gujarat in 2002 left more than a 1,000 people - mostly Muslims - dead
The issue has also become highly politicised, with 1984 one front in a macabre battle with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over whose riot was worse.
Despite also receiving a 'clean chit', the BJP's leader Narendra Modi - and frontrunner to be India's next PM - still faces questions over his role in the 2002 riots in his home state of Gujarat, in which at least 1,000 people died, most of them Muslims.
It has led to a kind of stalemate, with neither side keen to push too hard in case more skeletons fall from their own closets.
But, says Mr Phoolka, "no large-scale violence happens in India without the patronage of people in power".
And in a blistering piece, journalist Siddharth Varadarajan recently accused the Indian establishment of colluding in a cover-up, ensuring that inquiries into past riots never exposed the guilty and jeopardised "the edifice of a state that rests on pillars of impunity".
'Violence will continue'
In her cramped flat, Attar Kaur says she's thinking of voting for Arvind Kejriwal, leader of the new anti-corruption Aam Admi party (AAP) that swept to power after last year's Delhi local elections, because of his demand for a new inquiry into 1984.
Whether Mr Kejriwal will keep pressing for this now he's resigned as Delhi's chief minister is not clear. But "he has given us hope," says Mrs Kaur.
Until there is accountability, communal violence will continue, warns HS Phoolka - who has recently announced he is standing as an AAP candidate.
"If the guilty of 1984 had been punished, we wouldn't have seen the riots in Mumbai in 1993 and the riots in Gujarat in 2002. Be prepared for it to keep happening."
At least 50 people died and thousands were made homeless last December, after another eruption of communal violence just a few hours drive from Delhi in the town of Muzaffarnagar.
So far, no one has been held accountable there either. Delhi 1984: India's Congress party still struggling to escape the past: https://www.bbc.com/news/
A five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud is very likely to pass historical Judgement for ‘Transparency in Electoral Bond:
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