CHANDIGARH, India: Gunmen ambushed a bus in north India and killed’ 38 passengers in a three minute fusillade of automatic weapons fire in the worse massacre in Punjab, official said today. Five men forced the bus off the road last night near the state capital Chandigarh, drove it to a secluded spot and opened fire from the front and rear doors, police and survivors told Reuters.

One of the attackers was hit by his comrades’ bullets. They said. Police afterwards found his body in the abandoned getaway car.

Punjab Police Chief Julio Ribeiro said 38 people were killed; six of the people on the bus were unhurt.

Ribeiro also told a news conference the driver, Hari Singh, a Sikh, who was ejected from the bus by the assailants before the shooting began, had been detained for further questioning.

“This is the biggest tragedy to take place in Punjab,” said Home Minister Buta Singh, India’s top internal security official. Singh had earlier told reporters 40 people had been killed but police said two victims had been counted twice in error.

It was the worst massacre in Punjab state since Sikhs began a and 23 were injured. Only about campaign five years ago for an independent Sikh homeland, called “Khalistan” the land of the pure.

Gandhi who assumed direct rule over Punjab on May 11 when he sacked the State’s moderate Sikh government for failing to stop the violence said in a statement: “This atrocity should redouble our resolve to fight against extremism.

Survivors said passengers dived under seats as bullets swept through the interior. The bus was riddled with bullets and its seats and ceiling spattered with blood and glass. Blood-soaked luggage and a child’s slipper still lay inside.

Driver Singh said he braked after. A car pulled in front of his bus near Lalru, a village 25 km (15 miles) south of here on the main highway to Delhi.

 

“Five youths leapt into the bus and ordered me out of my seat at gunpoint”, he told reporters.

One of them drove the bus six kms (four miles) to a deserted spot where the attackers ordered the passengers to get down.

“But one refused because he was unwell… they started firing,” Singh said.

“Test us see how long Ribeiro would’ save you from us,” one gunmen shouted before firing, according to PTI.

Police said they found a hand” written note in Punjabi with the letterhead of the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF) on the dead gunman. It read: “The killing is to avenge the ‘fake encounters’ by police in Punjab.

“Unless and until the police stop the killing of Sikh youth, the Khalistan Commando Force will kill Hindus in the hundreds”.

Sikh organizations have frequently accused the police of killing innocent Sikhs in staged gun battles or attempted escapes. Ribeiro has denied the charge.

The KGF is one of the leading Sikh groups and claimed credit for assassination in Poona last year of retired Army Chief Gen. Arun Kumar Vaidya.

More than 500 people have been killed so far this year in Sikh majority Punjab compared witt 640 in the whole of 1986.

L.K. Advani, leader of the Hindu opposition Bharatiya Janata Party told Reuters that the attack showed that even with direct rule from New Delhi Gandhi could not stop the killing of Hindus in the State.

Protest strikes were called for tomorrow in Punjab, and Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir States. Shopkeepers in Chandigarh closed today in protest.

Two Sikh owned shops were burned in Kalka, about 50 km (30 miles) from Chandigarh and two Haryana roadways buses were stoned in Ambala just south of the massacre site. Haryana Roadways, a state corporation, operated the bus that was attacked.

It was the third attack on a bus in Punjab in a year. Gunmen killed 24 bus passengers on November 30 and shot dead 14 last July 25. Both those attacks sparked Hindu protests and Hindu Sikh clashes outside Punjab.

A Defense Ministry spokesman said the army had been ordered to standby to assist police in New Delhi but no incidents were reported. Police Commissioner in New Delhi Ved Marwah tonight banned gatherings of more than five people as a precaution.

Authorities ordered the borders of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh states sealed and put security forces across north India on alert.

Police said the bus left Chandigarh at 8:45 p.m. last night for the Hindu pilgrimage city of Rishikesh on the river Ganga to the southeast. Six men in a small white car forced the bus to stop and five got in. The sixth followed in the car, they said.

Article extracted from this publication >>  July 10, 1987