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Advani promises steps to prevent Sikh migration

Onkar Singh in New Delhi

Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani today said the government would take "effective security measures" to ensure that the Sikh community, target of yesterday's massacre in Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir, does not leave the valley.

Speaking to rediff.com, Advani condemned the massacre and said it was a pre-meditated act of terror timed to coincide with the visit of American President Bill Clinton.

"The militants deliberately targeted the Sikhs because they want the families to leave the valley. After the Kashmiri Pandits had left the valley, the Sikhs were the only ones who had stayed behind and braved the onslaught of the terrorists," Advani remarked.

The home minister said the government had had an inkling that an incident of this nature would take place during the visit of the American president, because such incidents have taken place on important occasions in the past.

"We sent two senior Cabinet ministers to get first-hand knowledge of the happenings in Chatti Singhpora. The Union Cabinet will discuss the matter once the President of the USA leaves Delhi and take appropriate action. We are in touch with the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Dr Farooq Abdullah," he said.

Asked if he was planning to visit Chatti Singhpora himself, Advani said he might.

Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, minister for urban employment, poverty alleviation and youth affairs, who visited the village with Minister of State for Civil Aviation Chaman Lal Gupta, confirmed that the government had some prior information about something like this. "A delegation of Sikhs from the village recently met the home minister and told him they were apprehending a threat to their lives. The government had issued necessary instructions to the state government. But that the militants would strike so soon was beyond our comprehension.

"What I saw there, I had never seen. According to villagers, the militants came dressed in military uniforms and told them to assemble at one place as they had come to search the village. Once the male members collected outside the village gurdwara, forty-odd militants opened fire and killed them, leaving behind their wailing mothers and wives and sisters," Dhindsa told rediff.com

The minister admitted that the morale of the local Sikhs was at an all-time low and they were talking in terms of migrating to Punjab. "I hope they do not actually shift because if this happens the militants would have succeeded in their mission."

Dhindsa, a Shiromani Akali Dal politician, said, "I do not know why they singled out the Sikh community for this dastardly act. Perhaps the militants felt the Sikhs were acting as a sort of obstruction in their cowardly designs against the innocent citizens of the state.

"The chief minister of Punjab, Parkash Singh Badal, and chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Dr Abdullah, also visited the village. The security forces aided by the state police are doing everything to apprehend the culprits. State police chief Gurbachan Jagat and the area commander had reached the place of crime and were personally supervising the investigations and combing operations," he reported.

Former director general of police, Punjab, Kanwar Pal Singh Gill, said the incident was planned and executed well by the terrorists. "Not only their timing, the way they executed the sordid act leaves no doubt in my mind that it was committed by the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizbul Mujahideen. The main aim is obviously to force the Sikhs in the valley to migrate to other places," he said.

Another retired police officer, Pritam Singh Bhinder, who once headed the Delhi and Punjab police forces, agreed. "There is a method in the madness. Perhaps the militants wanted to show the American president that the Pakistani agencies do not control them. By resorting to violent incidents of this nature, they perhaps want the Sikhs to migrate," he said.

Simranjit Singh Mann, member of Parliament from Sangrur, said he would visit the village in a couple of days. "I am taking a delegation of Sikhs from Delhi," he said.

Mann, president of the SAD, Amritsar faction, and a former separatist himself, said, "The incident has again brought to the fore the insecurity that the Sikhs as a nation have been feeling for some time. Indian Sikhs had to flee from Afghanistan and take refuge in India. Now the Sikhs in the valley have been attacked. The government must do something and ensure that the Sikhs from the valley do not migrate."

Former Indian Youth Congress president Maninderjit Singh Bitta led a rally to the Pakistan high commission office today and handed over a memorandum to officials of the mission. He condemned the massacre and blamed Pakistan for encouraging the extremists in Kashmir.

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