Sanjiv Bhatt
A first hand account of an eyewitness to the Sikh carnage of 1984. Delhi:
“Those days we lived in Saket.
The mob led by Congress AND Sanghi goons came from the direction of Madangir-Khanpur, burnt the Gurudwara near the G and H Block, attacked a granthi who lay injured on the road – pieces of a smashed harmonium scattered around him.
The residents, the Saket bhadralok, watched impassively; none volunteered to take the injured granthi in their car to the hospital. Finally an army vehicle was stopped and after much pleading an officer agreed to help.
The conduct of the residents of the nearby locality of Hauz Rani (overwhelmingly Muslim) was in contrast to this.
They all gathered on the road and did not allow the mob to pass through Hauz Rani or the Khirki area to Malviya Nagar to look for Sikh targets. I saw empathy rather than expression of any old grudge among the Muslims of the area.
The upshot was that soon after this, reports started appearing in a Hindi daily about Hauz Rani becoming a ‘Mini Pakistan.’
The author, a former IPS officer, was sacked by the BJP government after he testified against Narendra Modi in Gujarat riots case. The views expressed here are his own and www.jantakareporter.com does not endorse them.