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A Darkness Unforgotten
Rahul Bedi
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While the Sikh community waited for justice, an entire
generation born after the ghastly crime against humanity has
grown up and is eager to take affairs into its own hands. With
so much focus on the youth power, this generation often talks of
casting away the baggage of the past and moving on. Meanwhile,
an entire generation had either died out or grown old, now
completely hopeless. We bring you this piece from someone who
reported the events first hand, who was there in those grim
streets smelling of blood and death, and to whom the Sikh
community is indebted for his sheer diligence in continuing to
pursue the case. Rahul Bedi, you make the profession of
journalism proud. |
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 The
denial of party election tickets to Congress leaders Jagdish Tytler
and Sajjan Kumar is little recompense to the over 3,000 Sikhs who
died in the pogrom following then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s
assassination in October 1984. The wave of ethnic cleansing that
raged unchecked for nearly three days across the country after Mrs
Gandhi was shot dead by two of her Sikh bodyguards on the morning of
October 31 ended in Delhi only with her funeral, the state’s crazed
blood-lust satiated at last.
Whilst unbridled
chaos and mayhem spread unchecked across the Capital, the casual
slaughter of some 350 Sikhs, including women and children in the
trans-Yamuna Trilokpuri resettlement colony, was without doubt the
most brutal. The charred and hacked remains of the hundreds that
perished in Trilokpuri’s Block 32 on a smoky and dank November 2
evening bore silent testimony to an unbelievable orgy of slaughter
which, over two decades later, still haunts my memories. Time has
not made them fade.
The massacre
took place in two narrow alleyways not more than 150 yards long,
with one-roomed tenements on either side. It lasted over 48 hours,
with the murderers — who go unpunished to this day — even taking
breaks for meals before returning to resume their mad slaughter.
Both lanes were
littered with bodies with body parts and hair brutally hacked off,
forcing people to walk on tiptoe. It was impossible to place one’s
foot fully on the ground for one would step on either a hacked limb
or a dead person.
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The most frightening part, the part that still sends a chill up
my spine after 25 years, was the pall of utter silence that
shrouded the area. By the light of a few hurricane lanterns, we
walked dazed and wordlessly down the alleyway littered with
bodies. Halfway down was a young polio-afflicted woman holding a
child in dumb silence, all emotion drained from her. Her blank,
uncomprehending eyes looked at us sightlessly in what we took to
be a plea for help. Quietly, we lifted her and the child and
handed them over to the police party, never to see them again. |
The entire area
was awash with blood, some liquid, some clotted. Blood-gorged flies
buzzed lazily, sated. The blood did not flow down the drains, as
they too were now choked with human body parts.
It all began on
the morning of November 2 around 11.30 am when my colleague from
Indian Express, Joseph Maliakan, and I heard of the Trilokpuri
massacre — then ongoing — from Mohan Singh who had shaved his head
and face only hours before to save himself and had fled, taking
refuge in our office canteen. A dazed Singh, who had somehow managed
to escape the pogrom under cover of darkness, blandly told us that
300 Sikhs had been killed in Trilokpuri’s Block 32. These houses, we
learnt later, were occupied by poor, low-caste Sikhs who wove string
beds.
Shortly after,
along with Maliakan and Alok Tomar of Jansatta, I rushed to
Trilokpuri and, on arrival at the re-settlement colony — which was
established by Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency in the mid-1970s —
found the entrance blocked by massive concrete pipes, with lathiwielding men atop them.
At about 300
yards from Block 32, we found our path blocked by a huge mob. Before
we could reach them, two policemen astride a motorcycle burst
through the crowd, coming from the direction we were headed. We
flagged the motorcycle to a halt and asked the head constable
driving it whether any killings had taken place in Block 32.
Smiling
sardonically he told us that “shanti” (peace) prevailed. On
persistent questioning, he admitted that two people had been killed
in Block 32. As we proceeded down the narrow road towards Block 32,
our car was blocked by the mob. It turned nasty and began stoning
us. A spokesman for the crowd, a short, vicious looking man dressed
in a white kurta and pyjama, told us to leave or be prepared to
“face the consequences”. Block 32 was out of bounds, he said
flatly.
 Hurriedly
backing out under a barrage of rocks, we headed for the nearby
Kalyanpuri police station and asked the duty officer whether any
trouble had been reported from Trilokpuri’s Block 32. He too echoed
what his motorcycleborne colleagues had said, that the area was
calm, that shanti prevailed and that no deaths had been reported
from the police station’s area of responsibility.
A truck parked
nearby attracted our attention. On closer inspection we found three
charred bodies in the back and a half-burnt Sikh youngster lying on
top, still alive. In his quasiconscious state the man told us he was
from
Punjab
and had come visiting relatives in Trilokpuri. He said that a few
hours earlier, a rampaging mob armed with lathis and machetes had
killed his hosts and set him on fire after dousing his body with
kerosene. He had been brought to the police station, placed on top
of the dead bodies, and had lain there for the past six hours. He
died a horrible death soon after, we later learnt.
When the three
bodies in the truck and the grievously burnt yet still living Sikh
were pointed out to the station duty officer, he denied all
knowledge of them, saying they would be dealt with by “Saheb”, the
Station House Officer, who was “away in Delhi on routine business
and would return later in the evening”.
Desperate to get
help, we combed the area and were met by an army patrol commanded by
a Sikh colonel, part of the detail summoned from Meerut to bolster
civil authority who assured us that he would dispatch help to the
beleaguered Block 32. We returned to Block 32 only to discover that
no troops had arrived.
Later we came to
know that though the army had officially been summoned a day after
Mrs Gandhi’s killing to maintain order, it was merely token
deployment as none of the units summoned from cantonments around the
Capital were provided necessary help, guidance or logistical
direction by the local authorities.
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In darkness, a three-year-old girl, stepping over the bodies of
her father and three brothers, said quietly, ‘Please take me
home’ |
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The army was not
issued shoot-to-kill orders to quell the blood-thirsty mobs till
after Mrs Gandhi’s funeral pyre was lit on November 3, despite
claims to the contrary by officials, which were dutifully headlined
by newspapers.
Once those
orders were given, the army restored order within hours, although
for many days there were cases we investigated which revealed that
the local authorities had deliberately concealed reports of pockets
of Sikh refugees still fighting for survival across many east
Delhi
neighbourhoods.
After pleading
in vain with many military convoys to intercede and stop the
Trilokpuri killings, we arrived at the Police Headquarters around 5
pm and informed Additional Commissioner of Police Nikhil Kumar (who
later retired as head of the National Security Guard) of the
goings-on in the east Delhi colony.
To our chagrin
and amazement, he asserted that he was a “mere guest artist” at
Police Headquarters and only tasked with manning Commissioner SC
Tandon’s telephone line. All our pleadings to Kumar — now an MP from
Bihar
— to do something about the Trilokpuri killings were insouciantly
brushed off. Other senior police officers including those in charge
of the Trilokpuri district also expressed indifference and their
inability to help.
On returning to
Trilokpuri an hour later in the darkness we found the local Station
House Officer and two constables surveying the sea of dead Sikh
bodies, surrounded by thousands of people.
The most
frightening part, the part that still sends a chill up my spine
after 25 years, was the pall of utter silence that shrouded the
area.
NOT A sound
emanated from anyone as, by the light of a few hurricane lanterns,
we walked dazed and wordlessly down the alleyway littered with
bodies. Halfway down was a young polio-afflicted woman holding a
child in dumb silence, all emotion drained from her. Her blank,
uncomprehending eyes looked at us sightlessly in what we took to be
a plea for help. Quietly, we lifted her and the child and handed
them over to the police party, never to see them again.
In darkness, a
three-year-old girl, stepping over the bodies of her father and
three brothers, said quietly, ‘Please take me home’
A faint whimper
from inside the same house led us to a young Sikh whose stomach had
been slashed open two days earlier. He had managed somehow to tie a
turban around his gaping wound, crawl under a pile of bodies and
survive. All that the handsome scooter rickshaw driver wanted was
water. He died hours later before he could reach a hospital.
A three-year old
girl, stepping over the bodies of her father and three brothers amid
countless others lying in the street clung helplessly to one of us,
pleading for help. “Please take me home,” she quietly said, standing
knee-deep in corpses in what was the only room of her house.
Police arrived
in force more than 24 hours after the Trilokpuri massacre was
revealed by the Indian Express on November 3, the day of Mrs
Gandhi’s funeral.
By the time they
got there, there was nothing to protect. And no one.
In the 25 years
since then, we eyewitnesses deposed before innumerable inquiry
commissions, culminating with the one headed by Justice Nanavati.
However, not one of those really guilty ever ended up being punished
for the state-sanctioned pogrom of 1984.
Courtesy
Tehelka
29
April 2009
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