Who are the Guilty(1)

ANNEXURE-II
EYE-WITNESS ACCOUNTS
1. Dev Dutt, Journalist
By 4.30 p.m. on 31st October, a crowd of about 3,000 to 4,000 had gathered around the AIIMS in
front of the main entrance gate of that institution. There were slogans mostly in praise of Mrs.
Gandhi, and a few slogans threatening revenge. But there was no tension. There were a number of
Sikhs in the crowd. Their faces showed no fear or apprehension, although everyone knew that a
Sikh had assassinated the P.M. We talked to some of them in order to gauge their state of mind.
The Sikhs seemed to be supremely confident about the goodwill of their Hindu brethren. It seems
they nursed no suspicions against the Hindus. They did not show any traces of nervousness of any
kind. The non Sikhs in the crowd did not seem even to notice the presence of Sikhs and took their
presence as normal.
While this crowd waited patiently for the dead body of the PM to be brought out, the flow of traffic
and business in the kiosks around along the wall of the Safdarjung Hospital went on as usual.
I was standing near the crossing in front of the AIIMS when 30-40 young men emerged out of the
crowd and formed a neat column three or four men deep and ran towards the crossing near the
traffic island. Then the group moved towards INA market. They caught hold of a scooter and set it
on fire. There was a traffic jam near the petrol pump adjoining the INA market. The group turned
back and moved towards Safdarjung Hospital on Ring Road and moved towards Sarojini Nagar.
They began to pull Sikhs out of buses and remove their turbans and maltreat them. I saw five
turbans burning in a row on the Ring Road.
There was no police in the area. The group had a free hand. After some time say 20 minutes or so, a
group of khaki clad men arrived and began to chase away the miscreants.
It is difficult to explain the sudden eruption of violence in the AIIMS area on the evening of
October 31, 1984. Perhaps the unusual normalcy in that area provoked a section of the people
assembled there who were deeply moved by the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi. But the question is:
Who were these people who came out of the crowd and went on a rampage ?
2. Dipankar Gupta, Assistant Professor, JNU:
On November 1 at 11.00 a.m. I was coming by the Vasant Vihar Gurudwara (Priya Cinema) where
I saw a group of young men (about 60) attacking the Gurudwara. There were four policemen with
guns slung on their shoulders who at that point turned away from the Gurudwara and began
walking towards the Cinema complex.
On the same day at 9.20 a.m. I was at the JNU (New Campus) gate, where I found that a number of
young men were energetically spreading the rumour that a band of Sikhs shoot down Hindus and
that there were three bodies lying between the old and the new camps of JNU. When some students
and teachers offered to go down with him to verify his allegation, he disappeared.
Between 9.20 and 10.30 p.m. on November 1, a Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee (I) car kept
making the rounds of the campus. I do not know if the occupants of the car included JNU students,
but on two occasions I noticed that the occupants of the car conversed at length with those who
were spreading the rumour that Sikhs with sten guns were out to kill Hindus. At 10.40 a green
Ambassador car with a West Bengal number plate stopped at the gate and three well-to-do-people
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