1984
Sting Operation Reveals Delhi Cops, Government Colluded During 1984 Anti-Sikh Pogrom
THE TIMES OF INDIA
New Delhi, India
A sting operation by Cobrapost on several police officers serving in Delhi during the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984 exposes how the police refused to act against the murdering mobs, partly because they wanted to be on the right side of the Congress government of the day, and partly because the police force itself had got communalized.
Based on a series of interviews by an undercover reporter with six station house officers (SHOs) of the time, from areas where the massacres took place, the sting apparently brings to light 'confessions' by many of them. The interviews of two senior officers, ACP Gautam Kaul and then police commissioner S C Tandon, however, yielded no such confessions.
While Tandon parried all the questions, Kaul claimed that on one occasion when he went to check out reports of killings near Gurdwara Rakab Ganj, he had to flee since he was alone in front of a hostile mob.
The interviews reveal how an entire police force not only failed to act, but colluded with the government of the day to “teach Sikhs a lesson" in one of the worst examples of state-sponsored violence against a religious minority.
The SHOs interviewed were Shoorveer Singh Tyagi of Kalyanpuri, Rohtas Singh of Delhi Cantonment, SN Bhaskar of Krishna Nagar, OP Yadav of Srinivaspuri and Jaipal Singh of Mehrauli.
Amreek Singh Bhullar, who was SHO of Patel Nagar at the time, was also interviewed. He had submitted an affidavit to an inquiry commission accusing some local leaders of not just participating in the mass murders but also whipping up mobs into a frenzy.
Among the more shocking revelations is that messages were broadcast directing the police not to take action against rioters shouting slogans of "Indira Gandhi zindabad" and that bodies of victims were in some cases dumped far away from the scene of the killings to reduce the official toll of the pogrom.
According to some, while news of arson and rioting poured into the police control rooms, only 2 per cent of the messages were recorded. Later, entries in police logbooks were changed to get rid of evidence of inaction on the part of senior officers.
Senior officers did not allow subordinates to open fire on the killers. Even the fire brigade refused to move to areas where cases of arson had been reported. The police also did not allow the victims of the massacres to file FIRs or when they did file FIRs, clubbed many cases of murder and arson from disparate places in a single FIR.
At least three of the SHOs castigated Tandon for mismanagement. Tyagi, for instance, insisted that, "knowingly or unknowingly, he (Tandon) was under the influence of the government. He mismanaged in the beginning and in the first two days the situation went out of control."
Yadav too accused Tandon of not providing leadership to the force, while Bhaskar said that instead of singling out some SHOs, the police chief's head should have rolled.
The Ranganath Mishra Commission and the Kapur-Kusum Mittal Committee, both set up to inquire into the pogrom, held Tandon responsible for breakdown of law and order. When the Cobrapost reporter met Tandon, he refused to comment, saying anything said by him could create a controversy in poll season.
Bhaskar maintained that messages for reinforcement sent by him were ignored by senior officials. Bhullar accused additional CP Hukam Chand Jatav of refusing to act even when the press informed him about murders and arson taking place.
According to Bhullar, Jatav was in the control room in Karol Bagh when a reporter passed on the information to him, but he responded by saying he was in the control room and no such thing had happened. "He knew everything lekin wahan se move hi nahi kiya," claimed Bhullar. “He knew everything but did not even budge from there!”
Rohtas Singh, one of the officers indicted by the inquiry commissions, maintained that DCP Chandra Prakash did not allow him to open fire on the rampaging mobs. According to Rohtas, "he told me, and gave me in writing, that Indira Gandhi's murder is big enough an event. Now should you make an even bigger event by opening fire?"
Rohtas insisted that he could have substantiated his charges if only wireless messages had been faithfully recorded. "If those messages had been recorded, I could have proved many things, but not even two 2% were recorded in the log book of the control room," he said in Hindi, alleging also that Chandra Prakash had changed messages that would indict him.
Rohtas also admits to the force having got communal.
"I have no hesitation saying that our policemen who were drawn from the local men too had become communal-minded," he candidly observed.
The interviews also reveal how the police tried to put a spoke in the wheels of justice once the killings abated following the intervention of the Army after three days. First, they did not register cases and when they did, they clubbed disparate cases in one FIR.
According to Bhullar, "The police did not register cases, instead they tried to suppress cases. They knew there were huge massacres in their areas, so they tried to minimize, even picked up corpses and dumped them in Sultanpuri, to save their jobs."
[Courtesy: The Times of India. Edited for sikhchic.com]
April 22, 2014
Conversation about this article
1: G C Singh (USA), April 22, 2014, 10:30 AM.
As some one who has followed the political, cultural, economic and military onslaught against the Sikhs closely, leading to Operation Blue and organized genocide of the Sikhs, and as one who personally survived the mobs on October 31, 1984 in Delhi, I can tell you that the master mind of the pogrom was Rajiv Gandhi and his cousin Arun Nehru - the latter a nobody in the Government, but who acted as the de facto Home Minister and ensured that the entire Government machinery was used to massacre tens of thousands of innocent Sikhs in the most brutal manner. The first act of Delhi Police Chief Tandon was to send a wireless order at 2 pm to all police stations to disarm 6000 Sikh police officers and send them home so that they may not witness or help any Sikh. Most of the mobs were led by Indian intelligence agents of the various agencies, plain clothes CRPF and policemen, most from the neighboring states. They were transported on Government-run buses and trains and were supplied printed voter lists, pre-cut iron rods, petrol, tires and special chemicals to expedite the burning. Except for some human rights organizations and individual Hindus who helped the Sikhs, the ENTIRE Hindu establishment, including the media, the judiciary, and the RSS/BJP cadres had participated in this most shameful episode in human history. After this horrendous criminality, the Congress Party immediately declared elections and our Hindu brothers and sisters gave an overwhelming majority to this apprentice politician whose only act of accomplishment was the murder of tens of thousands of innocent Sikhs. The same history, it seems, will be repeated if Modi becomes the Prime Minister in the ensuing elections.
2: Sunny Grewal (Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada), April 22, 2014, 12:02 PM.
So what is the point of this article? Nothing will happen.
3: Jaswant Singh (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), April 22, 2014, 12:19 PM.
These so-called confessions, ostensibly extracted through a masterfully crafted scheme, tell us nothing new. They've been timed by the BJP/RSS goondas to coincide with the election season in order to drive more voters into the arms of the Hindu far-right nuts, as opposed to the Hindu Congressi nuts. These are games. The same kind of games that Romans played as Nero sang and Rome burned.
4: Hardev Singh (Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada), April 22, 2014, 1:33 PM.
For an open secret, who needs a sting operation and what will it achieve?
5: Kaala Singh (Punjab), April 22, 2014, 6:11 PM.
There is nothing new revealed by this sting operation. The entire country, the Government and its agencies, the police and army, the media ... and society at large ... ganged up against a small, defenceless segment of the Sikh minority -- who were mostly vulnerable because of their poverty or their isolation - and massacred them in the thousands after committing the most fiendish atrocities. Criminals from neighbouring states were transported to Delhi and other towns in state transport buses and given iron rods and other lethal weapons and a highly corrosive chemical to dispose off the bodies. The mobs were led by the Police and intelligence agents. The army which was stationed just 3 hours away was deliberately not called in for 3 days and when called was deliberately sent to wrong areas which were not affected while the affected Sikh populated areas continued to burn. The Army was called in and order restored only when the news of this horrendous genocide leaked out to the world. US satellites picked up the massacre and the footage was shown on international news channels and this started affecting the image of India as a fake "democracy". Also various foreign missions started relaying this news to their countries. Had the news of this genocide not leaked out, the entire Sikh population living outside Punjab would have been wiped out. After the genocide the Indian Govt tried it was best to suppress information from leaking out. The media deliberately did not publish anything related to this massacre. The affected areas were cleaned as if nothing happened there. The victims were threatened and terrorized not to speak out. This collusion is happening to this day when the judiciary colludes with the police and and investigation agencies and the Govt agencies to deny justice to the Sikhs. Govt records to this day show that only 3000 Sikhs were killed in Delhi when the actual number is in excess of 10,000 in Delhi. Overall, across India more than 50,000 Sikhs were killed in just 3 days. More than a million Sikhs were driven out of their homes and their properties usurped.