“Delhi me thoda acha nahi laga, jo kuch tha khatam ho gaya (Didn’t like it so much in Delhi, whatever we had was lost),” says 71-year-old Santokh Singh who has been living in Jalandhar after the 1984 riots.
On 1 November 1984, Santokh’s younger brother, Hardev Singh (24) was killed by a mob in Delhi’s Mahipalpur area.
Thirty-four years after the pogrom in which nearly 3,000 Sikhs were killed, on 20 November 2018, the Patiala House Court awarded death sentence to one among the accused, a first of its kind in the ’84 riot cases.
Santokh Singh had to wait for long before justice could be served. Singh has approached as many as 10 commissions in the last three decades but got no relief. The Quint revisits the timeline of the case that has now rekindled hope among other riot victims.
How Was the Violence Unleashed
It was a usual day for Hardev Singh on 1 November 1984 as he sat at his grocery shop, which was known as the ‘Khalsa kirana store’.
Avtar Singh (26), a customer had come to buy something when they were informed about Sikhs being targeted in the city following the assassination of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Hardev closed his shop and rushed to a nearby house where he hid along with Avtar. Hardev’s two brothers – Sangat Singh and Kuldeep Singh – who also ran grocery shops in the same area joined him.
The mob, comprising about 800-1000 persons, first looted their shops and set them on fire. Flanked with iron rods, lathis and kerosene cans, the mob reached the room where Hardev and others had taken shelter. All five men were first beaten up and then the room was set on fire. They were then thrown from the first floor of the house.
Hardev was attacked on his face by the very kirpan he used to carry.
While Hardev and Avtar died in the incident, Sangat Singh and Kuldeep Singh regained consciousness at the Safdarjung Hospital. The treatment slip, dated 6 November 1984, issued to Sangat Singh was submitted as evidence in the court.
Both Sangat and Kuldeep are key eyewitnesses in the case whose testimonies helped in identifying the accused.
Not just his brothers, even Santokh Singh’s two-and-a-half-year-old son, Amardeep Singh was not spared. His back was burnt badly in the violence that ensued. The family didn’t even know about Hardev’s death as they were not able to find his body.
Hardev’s body was cremated by a charitable institution ‘Sewa Samiti’ as ‘unknown’ and was later identified by his brothers with the help of a photograph.
Santokh Singh used to work as a granthi at Sadar Bazar gurudwara at the time of the incident.
As he tried to pick the broken pieces of his life together, it was the sheer brutality of violence that forced him to leave Delhi.
Santokh’s son, Jodhvir, who now runs a factory in Jalandhar says, ‘We didn’t even have rotis for days at a stretch when we returned to Jalandhar’.
Police was Clueless Till 1993
After the first charge sheet was filed on 23 February 1985, an accused, the then Congress leader Jaipal Singh was let off by the trial court.
Speaking to The Quint, lawyer HS Phoolka who has been following up with cases related to the 1984 riots, said: ‘As per law one cannot try the same man again once he has been acquitted.’
According to Article 20 of the Constitution, ‘No person shall be prosecuted and punished for the same offence more than once’.
And therefore, the focus shifted to other perpetrators in the case who were involved in attacking the Sikhs on 1 November 1984.
In the meantime, Santokh Singh also appeared before the Ranganath Mishra Commission which was constituted by the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1985.
Santokh submitted a hand-written affidavit in Punjabi to the Ranganath Mishra Commission, in which he had named the culprits. But nothing happened.
Since Santokh was not present in Mahipalpur at the time of incident, his affidavit recounted the details shared by the villagers of Mahipalpur, including his two brothers – Sangat Singh and Kuldeep Singh.
“When the Ranganath Mishra Commission was set up, no one was willing to hear us. They used to ask us for a copy of the FIR which we never had. FIR was finally filed at the Vasant Kunj police station in 1993. It was still a gap of (almost) ten years, from 1984 to 1993.”Santokh Singh, Survivor of 1984 riots
It was the anti-riot cell of the Delhi Police that had registered an FIR for the second time in 1993.
The police submitted the final report in the case as ‘untraced’, which basically means that either the accused didn’t join the investigation or the team probing the case was not able to nab the culprit.
11 Committees in Last 34 Years, No Relief for Victims
Since last 34 years, Santokh Singh and his two brothers – Sangat and Kuldeep – who now live in Jalandhar have approached 10 Commissions that were constituted to probe the ’84 riots.
From the Ranganath Mishra Commission in 1985 to Nanavati Commission in 2005, Santokh approached all the ten panels, only to return empty-handed. Some probe panels such as the Jain-Renision Commitee constituted in 1987 did absolutely NOTHING, only to be replaced by another Commission.
In a telephonic conversation with The Quint, Sangat Singh, younger brother of Santokh and an eyewitness in the case, says, he has always doubted the intention behind setting up these inquiry commissions.
“Don’t think the intention of the government behind setting up these Commissions was that justice should be delivered. Despite recording our statements, no action was taken and every Commission wound up work just like that.”Sangat Singh, Eyewitness in ‘84 riots case
Following the recommendations of the Mathur Committee in 2014, the NDA government set up an SIT (Special Investigation Team) in December 2015.
SIT Helps in Connecting the Dots
On 27 August 2016, Santokh Singh came across a public notice in a local newspaper, ‘Jagvani’ in Punjabi requesting all the eyewitnesses and victims to contact the SIT.
In September 2016, Santokh Singh met the SIT team in Delhi as they tried to put together all the related documents that could be submitted in court afresh.
Speaking about the sessions court judgment that awarded death sentence to Yashpal Singh and life imprisonment to Naresh Sehrawat, Singh gets emotional as he recalls his struggle against all odds.
“It does seem to me that I have got justice to some extent. I had wanted that both should be given death sentence. But the judge took pity at the age and related ailments among one of them and awarded life imprisonment. I have approached not just various commissions in the past but have filed legal cases as well which we lost.”Santokh Singh, Survivor of 1984 riots
Meanwhile the SIT set up by the NDA government had its share of hiccups as well. On 10 January 2018, the Supreme Court ordered that a three-member SIT be set up to look into 186 cases that were dropped earlier.
On 5 December 2018, the court amended its earlier order and has now agreed that a two-member panel will probe 186 cases that were closed by the SIT earlier.
As far as Hardev Singh’s case is concerned, since the order is from a sessions court, Santokh Singh knows that it’s just a small battle he has won in India’s long-drawn criminal justice system.
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