Indian Police Admit Role In Sikh Massacre

[lsingh]

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncategorized/looking-back-in-shame-delhi-cops-remember-assassination-aftermath-25-years-after-indira-gandhis-assassination_100269308.html

Looking back in shame - Delhi cops remember

assassination aftermath (25 years after Indira Gandhi�s assassination)

By Joydeep Gupta

New Delhi, Nov 3 (IANS) Three days, 3,000 Sikhs -

days that still haunt Delhi Police officials who

admit their failures and even complicity but even

25 years later will not go on record on the

pogrom that followed the assassination of Indira

Gandhi when marauders had a free run of the city.

The aftermath of the assassination on Oct 31,

1984,, when an estimated 3,000 Sikhs were killed

from Nov 1 to Nov 3, were days of such ignominy

that lips are still sealed even for officials

who have long retired and are out of the system.

On the evening of Nov 3, the army was called out,

signalling an end to the frenzy of murder and

mayhem and underscoring that effective police

action could have stemmed the violence.

The silence has not dulled the memories or the

realisation of their complicity in the violence.

The guilty have not been punished, said an

officer who is now very high in the police

hierarchy here. And Im not talking about the politicians.

I am talking of the police officers in charge of

various districts who did not do their duty, who

let the mobs rule, burn Sikh dwellings and

property and kill members of the community.

Two senior Delhi Police officers had their

careers ruined by those days in October-November

1984 - then police commissioner S.C. Tandon and

H.D. Pillai, the man who was in charge of the

security department. The men who killed Indira

Gandhi - Satwant Singh and Beant Singh - were

part of Pillais team. Various inquiry committees

found him guilty of not screening the men well

enough. Tandon took the overall rap.

But that was where the buck stopped. The deputy

commissioners in charge of various police

districts - there were six then - got away with

very little stain in their career records. This

despite the fact that Sikhs had been looted and

killed all over the capital. The night after

Indira Gandhi�s assassination, a third floor

terrace in Connaught Circus showed 13 fires burning in the city.

I remember I was shaving when I got the news

that Mrs Gandhi had been shot, said a recently

retired police officer who was still unwilling to

be identified. I rushed to AIIMS (All India

Institute of Medical Sciences, where the then prime minister�s body was taken).

There was chaos at the crossing in front of

AIIMS (there was no flyover then). People were

throwing stones at cars. Soon the president (Zail

Singh, a Sikh) came there and they started

throwing stones at his car. I rushed with my men and escorted his car inside.

Then I got a message on the wireless, asking me

not to take action against the men outside who

had thrown stones at the presidents car. To this

day, I don�t know who sent the order, but the

caller had all the right credentials for someone

speaking from the PCR (police control room). I

was so disgusted I didn�t go outside the AIIMS

campus most of the day. Anyway, there was plenty

to do there, with all the VIPs coming in.�

Delhi started burning the same evening at the

start of the anti-Sikh pogrom that went on till

the army stepped in. The arson was selective. In

areas like Kotla Mubarakpur of south Delhi, where

Hindu and Sikh businessmen have had shops cheek

by jowl for decades, Sikh shops were

systematically targeted, obviously by someone who knew the area very well.

First there was looting, then arson, then death.

The worst were in areas like Trilokpuri in east

Delhi. The next afternoon, an inspector posted in

the area had told this correspondent: I couldnt

stand and see it any more. People were being

dragged out of their homes and killed, while we

had been told not to do anything.�

Now retired, that erstwhile inspector still would

not say who had told him not to do anything. �Let

it go,� he pleaded. �Why do you want to reopen old wounds?�

Outside a lane in Kingsway Camp, North Delhi, in

the afternoon of Nov 3, 1984, a group of men

deflated all four tyres of this correspondent�s

car. They didn�t want a report on the way they

had looted and burnt Sikh houses in the lane. The

car was sheltered in the nearest police station.

The sub-inspector who had helped park the car is

a senior officer today. I wish I had caught

those b�s,� he says now. we couldnït have, you know. We were not allowed.�

(Joydeep Gupta can be contacted at joydeep.g@ians.in)

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[Jag_Singh]

Wait until they find the truth about 1947 independence day too. How they deliberately planed it all just to suit their own needs.