When a Tree Shook Delhi

Preface

Although the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi dates back to 1984, most of the material on it – spread over 1,000 official files – came to light incrementally from 2001 to 2004, that is, in thecourse of a second judicial inquiry into the carnage.

When the inquiry report of the Justice GT Nanavati Commission was made public in 2005, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in the Lok Sabha: ‘Twenty-one years have passed ... and yet the feeling persists that somehow the truth has not come out.’

An extraordinary admission, considering that the tacit purpose of appointing the second judicial inquiry in 2000, in an unprecedented development, and with a consensus among the political parties, was to undo the whitewash by the first, the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission, which had conducted all its proceedings under a veil of secrecy in 1985–86.

Furthermore, since the Nanavati Commission reiterated the Misra Commission’s clean chit to his political party’s government in1984, Manmohan Singh could not have possibly had any vested interest in voicing the widespread feeling in 2005 that the truth had still not been revealed.

This book seeks to bring out the truth, redressing the failure of the two judicial inquiries conducted by Supreme Court judges. The material available for setting the record straight is abundant. Though its report turned out to be deficient, the proceedings of the Nanavati Commission were themselves a model of transparency, as the body representing the victims, the Carnage Justice Committee, was allowed to photocopy almost all the documents submitted by the government.

Thus, besides the reports of the two judicial inquiries published by the government, this book is based on the plethora of records disclosed during the Nanavati probe. Those include the reports of three administrative probes conducted on the recommendation of the Misra Commission:

some_text   The Kusum Lata Mittal Committee report on the delinquencies of police personnel during the carnage.

some_text   The Jain-Aggarwal Committee report on the deficiencies in the registration, investigation, and prosecution of cases related to the carnage.

some_text   The RK Ahooja Committee report on the death toll of the carnage.

some_text   Evidence collected by the abortive Ved Marwah Committee appointed by Delhi Police.

some_text   Reports by police officers, from station house officers to the commissioner, on what each of them did during the fateful period.

some_text   Log books of police stations and officers.

some_text   Log books of fire stations.

some_text   Affidavits filed before the Misra Commission, and statements recorded by it, except those of the persons who had dealt with the carnage in various official capacities.

some_text   Affidavits and statements from the records of the Nanavati Commission, including the replies filed by political leaders and public servants to specific notices about allegations of their complicity.

The challenge of making sense of such elaborate and complex evidence, and locating places where the reports by Justices Misra and Nanavati had suppressed the truth demanded, sure enough, not only legal acumen but also intimate knowledge of the carnage and its aftermath.

The authors of this book meet both criteria. While senior advocate, HS Phoolka, spearheaded the struggle for justice for carnage victims right from the beginning, legal journalist Manoj Mitta, served as a catalyst to the cause by exposing cover-ups at critical stages. Their coming together for this book is, in fact, an extension of their collaboration stretching over two decades.

Phoolka was the convenor of the Citizens Justice Committee, which was the main representative of the victims before the Misra Commission. He also led the legal team of the successor body, the Carnage Justice Committee, in all the proceedings before the Nanavati Commission. Much as he is an interested party and, indeed, the face of the whole fight for justice, this book is by no means a summary of Phoolka’s arguments before the Nanavati Commission. Mitta’s involvement in the book has imparted a necessary detachment to it. While following up the carnage issue in a succession of national publications (The Times of India, India Today, and The Indian Express), Mitta has interacted closely with an array of persons engaged in cover-ups: political leaders, police and military officers, bureaucrats, judges, government lawyers, and defence counsel. Having conceived its structure, Mitta has taken pains to ensure that the book is based mainly on the wealth of evidence that emerged in the course of the Nanavati probe.

The book is divided into two parts. The first is a journalistic reconstruction of the carnage, by Mitta, with inputs from Phoolka. The second is a first-person account of Phoolka’s struggle for justice, as told to Mitta. There is also an annexure providing excerpts from testimonies before the judicial inquiries by prominent citizens and a victim. Enhancing the value of the book is a selection of contemporaneous photographs from different sources. The authors assume collective responsibility for the veracity of the entire book.

Given the passion they share for human rights and the rule of law, the authors hope that this book will serve as a reality check on some of the most touted institutions of the Indian democracy.

PART – I

UNCOVERING THE ‘TRUTH’

Dateline New Delhi

19 November 1984: It was barely a fortnight since thousands of Sikhs were orphaned, widowed, or rendered homeless in the wake of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Her son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, likened the pogrom to the reverberations caused by the impact of a fallen tree: ‘But, when a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it does shake a little.’

The statement created a sensation as it was the first time Rajiv justified the conduct of the mobs, which had sought to avenge his mother’s murder. The justification set the tone for the cover-up of the massacre as well as the election held a month later.

Even otherwise, the tree-shaking-the-earth metaphor caught the popular imagination because of the occasion on which Rajiv came up with it at the Boat Club near India Gate. It was the first rally addressed by him as prime minister, commemorating Indira’s first birth anniversary after her death.

While paying tributes to his mother, Rajiv desisted from condemning the horrendous reprisal to her murder, let alone promising to take any action against the guilty. The closest he came to expressing any reservations about the massacre of Sikhs was for its strategic repercussions to the nation, rather than any human rights considerations. Referring to the need to ensure peace, Rajiv cautioned, ‘Any action taken in anger can cause harm to the country. Sometimes, by acting in anger, we only help those who want to break up the country.’

Empathizing with their krodh (intense anger), as he originally put it in Hindi, Rajiv commended the mobs for ending the bloodshed as they did in three days or so, even if they had killed 3,000 Sikhs in Delhi alone by then: ‘But, from the way you put a stop to it, from the way India has again been brought back to the path of unity with your help, and is able to stand united together again, the world can see that India has become a genuine democracy.’ Thus, not only did he suggest that the massacre was inevitable, he even found a silver lining to it.

At that traumatic moment in India’s history, its prime minister made no bones about the fact that he was only reaching out to – or harvesting, with an eye on the upcoming election – those who were ‘very angry’ with the Sikh community. In his entire Boat Club speech, Rajiv did not say a word about the bereaved families, much less about those conscientious non-Sikhs who had tried to save the Sikhs or believed that the violence had been politically engineered.

17 January 1985: President Giani Zail Singh walked into Parliament House flanked by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who had led the Congress Party to a landslide victory in the election a fortnight earlier; and Parliamentary Affairs Minister HKL Bhagat, whose east Delhi constituency was by far the worst affected in the1984 carnage.

Addressing a joint sitting of the two houses at the behest of the Rajiv Gandhi government, Zail Singh said, ‘Disturbances and violence in Delhi and in some other parts of the country, following Indira Gandhi’s assassination, resulted in loss of life and property. Stern and effective action was taken to control the situation within the shortest possible time. My government extends its deepest sympathy to the families which suffered during the violence.’

That was the furthest the Rajiv Gandhi government went while referring to the carnage, in a tone that was evocative of his tree-shaking-the-earth metaphor. After the president’s address, the two houses separately adopted a common ‘resolution’ the same day expressing condolence for Indira Gandhi’s death. Though it said that she ‘loved India and the Indian people with a passion so sublime that it will live among us for long ages,’ the resolution expressed no regret about a section of the same Indian people being massacred in her name.

Its omission to offer a token of condolence to bereaved families seemed all the more glaring four days later, when the parliament took due cognizance of another major disaster that befell India in 1984, the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, and the government responded by promising to take necessary civil and criminal actions against its perpetrators.

10 August 2005: The ghosts of the 1984 carnage returned to haunt a coalition government led by the Congress Party as the parliament debated the subject for the first time in the twenty-one years that had elapsed. The provocation was the report of a fresh judicial inquiry tabled in the parliament two days earlier.

Most political parties, including coalition partners and allies, reacted adversely to the government’s decision to reject the Justice GT Nanavati Commission’s recommendation to take action against the minister for overseas Indians, Jagdish Tytler. But the Congress Party president, Rajiv Gandhi’s widow, Sonia Gandhi, was evidently in two minds about dropping Tytler from the government, as that was fraught with the risk of reviving allegations of complicity against her late husband. After all, it was Rajiv Gandhi who had made Tytler a minister for the first time, that too, within two months of the 1984 carnage.

Unable to come up with a convincing response to the vehement attacks in the Lok Sabha on the government’s action taken report (ATR), Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made the candid admission: ‘Twenty-one years have passed, more than one political party has been in power, and yet the feeling persists that somehow the truth has not come out and justice has not prevailed.’

Conceding that ‘there is something called perception, and there is the sentiment of the House,’ Manmohan Singh gave ‘a solemn promise and a solemn commitment’ to the Lok Sabha to reconsider the ATR. He also promised ‘all possible steps’ wherever the Nanavati Commission had ‘named any specific individuals as needing further examination or specific cases needing re-opening and re-examination.’

The message went home the same evening, and Tytler finally yielded to the pressure to resign, and saved further embarrassment to the government and the Congress Party. Simultaneously, another Congress MP indicted by the Nanavati report, Sajjan Kumar, quit a post given to him by the local Delhi government.

11 August 2005: Emboldened by the resignations of Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, Manmohan Singh was more forthcoming in the Rajya Sabha than he was the previous day in the Lok Sabha. If he had conceded generally in the Lower House that ‘the feeling persists that somehow the truth has not come out,’ the prime minister was more categorical in the Upper House in owning up to that feeling:‘There were lapses in 1984. Several commissions have gone into this matter. We all know that we still do not know the truth, and the search must go on.’ What he called a ‘feeling’ one day transformed the next day into something ‘we all know'.

Tracing the events that followed the carnage, ManmohanSingh, who is himself a Sikh, said, ‘It took the Sikh community alot of time to regain its self-confidence after the tragic events of1984.’ Since he did not have to be defensive any longer abouthaving a carnage-tainted person like Tytler in his council ofministers, he himself seemed to have regained self-confidence,literally overnight.

Upping the ante, Manmohan Singh mustered the courage todo the minimum that Rajiv Gandhi should have done in theimmediate aftermath of the carnage, namely, to apologize to theSikhs for the 1984 carnage. ‘I have no hesitation in apologizing notonly to the Sikh community but the whole Indian nation becausewhat took place in 1984 is the negation of the concept ofnationhood, as enshrined in our Constitution,’ Manmohan Singhsaid, adding, ‘On behalf of our government, on behalf of the entirepeople of this country, I bow my head in shame that such a thingtook place.’

Forebodings

Armed with sticks and burning torches, a mob of about twenty men pounced on the cavalcade of the president of India, GianiZail Singh. Luckily, the president’s limousine drove past them before the assailants could reach the convoy.

The car in which the president’s press secretary was travelling was, however, not so lucky. Since it was at the tail of the cavalcade, the mob succeeded in smashing its windowpanes. The miscreants tried to set it on fire by flinging torches inside the car through its broken windows.

This audacious attack on the president’s cavalcade, around 4.45 pm on 31 October 1984, marked the beginning of a wave of violence that culminated in a massacre of 3,000 Sikhs over the next three days right in the capital.

At the time of the attack on his cavalcade, President Zail Singh was heading towards the hospital, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), to see the body of India’s prime minister, Indira Gandhi, who had been assassinated that morning.

Mrs Gandhi was shot in her house by two of her security guards. Both of them were Sikhs, a minority community constituting barely two per cent of India’s population. They took revenge on Mrs Gandhi for ordering the army to storm into the holiest shrine of the Sikhs, the Golden Temple at Amritsar, in an anti-insurgency operation five months earlier, in Punjab, killing scores of innocent pilgrims, as collateral damage.

That was the first – and mercifully, the only – instance in India of a sitting prime minister, head of government, being killed. Given that the assassination was the fallout of prolonged insurgency in Punjab, the thirty-four-year-old Indian republic was in the throes of a crisis.

The president of India is the titular head of state, first citizen, and supreme commander of the armed forces. The mob that attacked his cavalcade on the evening of 31 October 1984, was shouting anti-Sikh slogans. In a quirk of fate, the president happened to be a Sikh. Zail Singh was then going to AIIMS straight from Palam Airport. He had just flown in from North Yemen, cutting short his state visit, to rush back home.

Zail Singh’s cavalcade approached AIIMS from the inner Ring Road, which is formally called Mahatma Gandhi Marg after the apostle of non-violence. The mob attacked the cavalcade at what was then known as the Kamal Cinema intersection, about a kilometre short of AIIMS.

About two decades later, Tarlochan Singh, who was Zail Sngh’s press secretary in 1984 and who went on to become chairman of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM), gave a first-person account of the attack on the president’s cavalcade. He was testifying before the Justice GT Nanavati Commission, which was set up in 2000 to conduct a fresh judicial inquiry into the 1984 carnage, as the first had commanded little credibility. Despite the security breach exposed by the attack on the president’s cavalcade, the policemen present then in large numbers around AIIMS, failed to take cognizance of it. None of the armed miscreants, who had dared to attack the first citizen of the country, was apprehended.

The omission paved the way, within minutes, for another attack on Zail Singh, this time, right in front of AIIMS. Raising slogans against him and his community, a mob pelted stones at his cavalcade. The president’s car itself was hit. But, being bulletproof, its windows and windshield withstood the attack. His bodyguards, however, sustained injuries while trying to shield the president.

The attacks on the president’s cavalcade were widely reported in the next morning’s newspapers amid stories about Indira Gandhi’s assassination. ‘Zail’s car stoned, panic in Delhi’ was a headline in The Telegraph, which said: ‘The President’s motorcade, as it proceeded towards AIIMS from the airport, was heavily brickbatted. Three cars in the motorcade were damaged, though the president, who was in his bulletproof car, was unaffected.'

Jagjit Singh, an activist of the trade union wing of the ruling Congress Party, was among the many Sikhs who felt secure enough to join the milling crowd of mourners around AIIMS. Despite a delay in official confirmation, the news that Mrs Gandhi had succumbed to her injuries was out by 1.00 pm. That was thanks mainly to the special afternoon editions of newspapers brought out at a time when twenty-four hour private news channels were still unheard of in India.

In his affidavit before the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission, the first judicial inquiry ordered in 1985, Jagjit Singh gave an eyewitness account of the second attack on President Zail Singh. All the stone pelting, he said, was done by a small group which raised slogans such as ‘Giani Murdabad’ (Down with Zail Singh), ‘Sardar gaddar hai’ (Sikhs are traitors) and ‘Khoon ka badla khoon’ (Avenge murder with murder).

Since the police remained mute spectators to such a grave provocation, the slogans against Sikhs caught on and did not subside even after the president’s departure from AIIMS by about 5.15 pm. ‘On seeing that the situation was turning anti-Sikh, the Sikhs who had been standing there started moving away,’ Jagjit Singh added.

A Hindu witness, DP Gulati, who was then an engineer with the Delhi Development Authority, corroborated that, even as the crowd in the vicinity of AIIMS shouted anti-Sikh slogans, those who indulged in violence there at that stage were no more than ‘twenty to twenty-five persons.’ In his affidavit before the Nanavati Commission, Gulati specified that the mob was led by local Congress Party councillor, Arjan Dass. (Incidentally, within a few months of the carnage, Arjan Dass became one of the first casualties of the terrorist attacks fuelled by it.)

Kuldip Singh, a Sikh businessman from a nearby colony, Safdarjang Enclave, had left AIIMS a little before the arrival of the president’s cavalcade. In his affidavit filed in 1985 before the Misra Commission, Kuldip Singh confirmed that Sikhs were then very much present in the throng of mourners at AIIMS.

In fact, the law and order situation in the earlier part of 31 October, was evidently normal enough for Kuldip Singh to visit AIIMS twice in the course of the same day in connection with his mother-in-law’s treatment.

On his first visit, Kuldip Singh was at AIIMS from 10.00 am to 11.30 am, roughly the time when a team of doctors was working on the bullet-ridden body of Indira Gandhi, on the eighth floor of the same building. Kuldip Singh revisited AIIMS at about 4.00 pm, even after learning that Indira Gandhi was dead, and that her body was still in the hospital. Referring to the huge crowd he found on his second visit, Kuldip Singh said, ‘There were many sardars (Sikhs) also in the crowd.'

The Sikhs, identifiable as they were from their turbans, began to melt away after those sudden attacks on the Sikh president. That is how the handiwork of a small section of the crowd gathered around AIIMS, triggered attacks on Sikhs in general.

Police records, however, mention neither of the attacks on the president. This is despite, or perhaps because of the fact that his cavalcade was attacked on the very day that the prime minister was assassinated.

The then commissioner of Delhi Police, Subhash Tandan, was cross-examined on this lapse eighteen years later, on 23 April 2002, before the Nanavati Commission. He passed the buck to one of his subordinates, Chandra Prakash, who was directly in charge of the district in which AIIMS was located. Since he did not himself witness the attack on the president, Tandan said that he had instructed Prakash to look into