Who are the Guilty(1)

The People's Union for Democratic Rights and the People's Union for Civil Liberties have filed a writ
petition in the Delhi High Court asking for an independent agency like the CBI to carry out the
investigation and requesting the magistrate to conduct an identification parade of the accused
policemen and politicians. The petition has expressed the view that the proposed official investigation
for prosecution of the culprits will prove futile, as they are being carried out by the police themselves
who are responsible or the carnage. The petition is based on the present report and affidavits and
recorded statements of numerous witnesses and survivors. For instance a freelance journalist saw two
people being arrested by the army for trying to set on fire a Sikh house in Sultanpuri on November 10
and then saw the police releasing them within a few hours.
RESPONSE -OF THE RULING PARTY: The attitude of the ruling party continues to be stubborn -
marked by a determined refusal to acknowledge facts which by now are openly recognised by
everyone. The Prime Minister has not yet ordered any enquiry into the role of his party men in the
recent riots. The only indirect acceptance of the responsibility of his party men is the dropping of two
MPs, listed in our Annexure'IV - Sajjan Kumar (Outer Delhi) and Dharam Dass Shastri (Karol Bagh)
from the list of Congress (I)candidates' for the elections. However , H.K.L. Bhagat, Lalit Makan and
Jagdish Tytler have been given tickets - and thus clean chits by the Prime Sinister.
Soon after the release of our report- to the Press, the President of the Delhi Pradesh Congress-I
Committee, Mrs. Tajdar Babar in an official statement described the report:, a "pack of lies" and
alleged that we had never visited the camps but had written the report from our "cozy beds". She
sounded a warning by adding that if anything happened o her partymen, we would be held "squarely
responsible." Soon after this, on November 19, Mrs. Gandhi's birthday, the Prime Minister in his
speech at Boat Club, used the provocative term "badla" (revenge) while urging his followers to
respond to Mrs. Gandhi's assassination, though he added after a pause that the "badla" should be
through the peaceful means of elections. Trying to rationalize the carnage and the riots that followed
the assassination, he described the events as the shaking of the earth after the fall of a big tree. If this
the attitude of the ruling party, it portents an ominous future for not only civil liberties organizations
in the country, but also for any law-abiding citizen who seeks to bring the guilty to book.
RESPONSE OF THE PUBLIC: Many sections of the city's intelligentsia have carried out independent
investigations by visiting the camps and going to affected areas. They range from senior university
professors and government officials to doctors, engineers, lawyers and students, from members of
voluntary agencies and women's groups to opposition parties (including BJP and CPM). They have
unanimously come to the conclusion that the carnage was well organized and planned, that it was not
spontaneous or a breakdown of the administration. It is their unanimous demand that a public enquiry
be held. To mention few among such efforts, we can refer to the exhaustive report on Nand Nagri by
the CPM, report by a team of 3 Delhi University professors and a professor of the Centre for Study of
Developing Societies on Sultanpuri, and a Nagrik Ekta Manch report on Nanaksar Ashram.
Senior citizens of the city have constituted themselves into a commission of enquiry consisting of
former Chief Justice S.M. Sikri and former Home Secretary Govinda Narayan and are carrying out indepth
interviews.
Various other efforts have also been underway. More than 20 organizations took out a procession
from the Red Fort to the Boat Club on November 24, to demand that the culprits be punished and an
official judicial inquiry be commissioned. Artists, painters, theatre people took out a peace march on
November 17 with a banner with a famous line from Iqbal's poem "Mahzab Nahin Sikhata Aapas
Mein Vair Kama" (Religion does not preach mutual hatred).
While these efforts at analysis of the recent past continue, the immediate future looks bleak and
uncertain to a large section of the population - both Sikhs and Hindus, as well other minority
groups.
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