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'All I want is that the killers of my husband be hanged'

Onkar Singh in New Delhi

It was business as usual at Tilak Vihar in west Delhi where over 400 families of the 1984 riot victims have been living since mid-1985 when a rediff.com team visited the place on January 21, 2000 at ten in the morning.

Elderly Sikhs were keeping themselves busy with various activities. One of them was making a folding cot, another was repairing an electric fan...

Meanwhile, the younger set, moving around on motorcycles and scooters, selling vegetables and other foodstuff, other eatables, doing a bit of carpentry and other odd jobs to help the family.

These people had shifted to this place from various part of Delhi and places outside Delhi like Kanpur, Bihar, Bombay etc after mobs began targetting them after two Sikhs killed Indira Gandhi in 1984.

Many of them find little meaning in the fresh probe ordered into the matter.

"Things can never be the same for us. We have all lost our near and dear ones in large numbers and for many years we lived under threat of being liquidated because the killers of our relatives were roaming around freely and sending us threatening messages time and again. The basic aim of these people was to prevent the victims from deposing against those who killed the Sikhs in 1984.

"We have had a difficult time bringing up our children and also fighting court cases against the killers. We are somehow living. Nobody has done anything for us and nobody will do anything for us in future as well," said middle-aged widow who has three daughters and four sons. She was living in a locality in North Delhi when a mob allegedly dragged out the Sikhs and killed them.

Mansha Singh and his wife Devi Kaur, along with members of their families, lived on block 32 of Tirlokpuri in East Delhi.

"I lost three sons and one brother and one daughter-in-law in the riots. My family members and I escaped and lived in huge pipes for three days," Mansha Singh told rediff.com.

Asked about the National Democratic Alliance's plan for a new commission of inquiry to probe the riots, he expressed his cynicism.

"What hope can we have from the new commission when we did not get justice from the previous commissions of inquiry or the committees set up by those commissions. We have lost faith in the system because the killers are roaming free. The lower court ordered that three of them be hanged but, by the time the matter was settled by the highest court, not one of them is going to suffer. Their death sentences have been commuted.

The butcher is going to live. Just as others before him are also living and roaming around in Tirlokpuri. We haven't got anything from the government for our losses. We have difficulty in getting our children to settle," Mansha Singh said.

Almost everyone who lives in Tilak Vihar, echoed Mansha Singh. Har Bai, who used to live in the same block as Mansha Singh in Tirlokpuri, lost her husband Kundan Singh in the riots of November 1,1984. She too fled along with her little children, including a newly-born girl, and roamed in fields for three days before she could muster up the courage to go to a police station. The police sent her and her children to a refugee camp.

"We have gone through a difficult time but for Bhajan Kaur who fought a court battle to get some kind of financial relief for us, we would not have got anything," she said. Her sixteen-year-old son sells vegetables before his house to earn some money.

"Yes, I have heard that the government is going to set up a new commission of inquiry to go into the 1984 riots. But what is the use? So many years have passed and not one man has been hanged for killing Sikhs. We have almost given up hope.

If the new commission can give us financial assistance then it would be something; it would give me something to marry off my daughters and settle my sons," she said.

Balvinder Kaur who came from Sunder Nagari in trans-Yamuna in East Delhi also lost her husband in the riots.

"I cannot say if the new commission of inquiry will give me anything. All I want is that the killers of my husband be hanged," she said.

Gopal Singh was living in Lucknow when the riots broke out. Though no one in his family was killed, fear drove him to Delhi, where he settled down in Tilak Vihar along with the riot victims of Delhi. He too is sceptical of the need for a new commission.

These Sikhs are bitter that the first commission of inquiry, headed by Justice Ranganath Misra, gave a clean chit to the Congress leaders. Many of the riot victims had named these leaders as being instrumental in organising the riots following Indira Gandhi's killing by her bodyguards, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh.

Though a number of panels went into the circumstances that led to the widespread anti-Sikh riots in 1984 in Delhi and elsewhere, nothing concrete resulted in terms of prosecutions.

" The biggest drawback of the Justice Misra Commission was the terms of reference. These made it clear that the Commission had the limited object of finding out whether or not the riots were organized. The Congress leaders, according to commission report, had nothing to do with the riots. It named one government official from Kanpur as helping the rioters but no action was taken against him. He retired a couple years back," said Dr Mahip Singh, member of the Justice R S Narula committee set up by Madan Lal Khurana, former Delhi chief minister.

But he welcomed the move for a new commission of inquiry to go into the 1984 riot cases all over again.

"But everything would depend upon the terms of reference and who will be its chairman," he said.

EARLIER REPORT:
Fresh probe ordered into anti-Sikh riots

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