Punjab government has announced a meagerly compensation of 20,000 each to the families of all those killed in the state during the last two years. Compensation will also be paid for all those killed in the Golden Temple. However, no compensation will be paid to the families of those against whom police had registered cases of terrorism.

The announcement is a political stunt as thousands of Sikh young men killed during this period have either been shown as terrorists or missing. Police or army kept no record of the over 6000 killed in the Golden Temple alone. Their bodies were cremated in heaps. After killing a Sikh youth, the police disposed of his body and declared that he had crossed over to Pakistan or showed it as an ‘encounter’ by planting weapons on the body.

Article extracted from this publication >>  July 12, 1985