On the recent violence in Delhi which continued unabated and unchecked for four long fearful days (October 31 to November 3, 1984), after the dastardly assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, good reports and articles have already come out and are coming out. But many more investigative and analytical reports required to obtain a fuller and more complete understanding of the enormity of the tragedy.
Some of the reasons, which prompted the writing of this report were the stories – which were being circulated as facts and generally accepted as true. These said, to pick out a few:(i) the violence was purely communal – a Hindu versus Sikh affair, (ii) it was a spontaneous outburst of people’s anger to teach the Sikhs a lesson, and (iii) the killing of the Sikhs had begun on the 31st October itself, accompanied by all kinds of rumors, from celebration by Sikhs to poisoning of Delhi’s drinking water, and arrival of Jhelum Express filled with Hindu corpses.
These were not at all true, but we realised that unless these were refuted with irrefutable evidence, the real truth that it was neither communal nor a spontaneous outburst of unbridled rage of the people but organised with the blessings of the party in power, will be lost. After interviewing hundreds of victims talking to several people who had gone through perhaps the worst communal violence in history during the partition of India and some police officials, even connivers with the killers, we have come to the conclusion that the violence was not communal in character. One and all have given us to understand that it was sponsored by the Congress-I members and there was nothing communal about it. We have also gathered conclusive evidence of that involvement.