The White Paper’s figures of the number of people killed or injured at the Golden Temple during the Army operations, seem to reflect gross under-estimation and understatement. The White Paper’s figures of the casualties on account of the Operation Bluestar alone are:

  1. Own troops killed 83
  2. Own troops wounded 249
  3. Civilians/terrorists killed 493
  4. Terrorists and other injured 86
  5. Civilians/terrorists apprehended 592

Our eye-witness accounts point out two unmistakable facts:

(a) There were thousands, perhaps ten thousand people, consisting of pilgrims, S.G.P.C. employees, Akali volunteers came to court arrest, and terrorists present inside Golden Temple complex when the Army started firing at the Golden Temple from all sides on the dawn of June 4.

(b) The battle lasted nearly 56 to 60 hours from 4 a.m. on June 4to about 4 p.m. on June 6. The firing was almost incessant a continuous and, despite the White Paper’s several claims, had n constraints. It was a most fierce battle.

Therefore, not hundreds but thousands could well have died during the operations, and thousands maimed or injured. The girl student had seen stacks and stacks of dead bodies piled up all over the parikrama very early on the morning of June 6. Joginder Singh estimates that at least 1500 dead bodies were lying on the parikrama. Bhan Singh saw hundreds of people dying before him on June 6. Harcharan Singh Ragi saw hundreds of people including women and children, being shot down by Army commandos, as they came out to surrender on the after-noon of June 6, outside the Golden Temple on the Ghanta Ghar side. We may hesitate to accept exact figures such as A.F.D.R. Vice President S. S. Bhagawalia’s estimate of 2009 killed including about 400 Hindu Bhaiyyas or the AISSF members estimate “that 7 to 8 thousand people were killed” or Surinder Singh Ragi’s confident assertion that ‘during the Army operation at least 7000 people were killed on the parikrama and another 1000 dead bodies were recovered from various rooms.” These are all impressions. There is no reliable estimate because the Press was not allowed.

Nevertheless, the clear conclusion emerges that hundreds and hundreds of people were killed during the Army Action on Golden Temple in June 1984 most brutally. It was indeed a mass massacre mostly of innocents. The post-mortem reports (see Annexures 7 & 8) speak of the Army’s brutalities in very clear terms—

(i) Most of the dead bodies had their hands tied behind their backs implying that they had not died during the action, but like Sevadar Prithipal Singh’s temporary companions lined up before the tiring squad, all of them must have been shot after being captured alive and

(ii) At the time of the post-mortem, the bodies were in a putrid and highly decomposed state—they had been brought for post-mortem after 72 hours implying a totally callous attitude towards the injured and the dead.

Even after June 6, many died due to negligence, while under the detention of the Army and many others were killed in Army camps. According to the AISSF member: “‘On the evening of 7th June 1984 was brought to the Army Camp and locked in the Arms Rooms with 28 persons. It had no ventilation and there was no water. 14 died of suffocation including Sujan Singh, a member of the SGPC.” According to a former MLA, Harbans Singh Ghumman, 37 Sikh youths were killed in one of the Army camps at Amritsar between June 16 and June 18, 1984. He had been personally concerned about this incident at that time as he had learnt that this youngest son, Randhir Singh, was also being detained in one of the military camps at Amritsar,

  1. Jodhpur detenues—Were they waging war?

One of the purposes of “Operation Bluestar” according to the White Paper, was to flush out the terrorists from the Golden Temple complex. Hundreds of people who were arrested from the Golden Temple after the Army action and detained by the Army were charged as terrorists”. 379 of the alleged “most dangerous terrorists’ were forced to sign a common confessional statement and thereafter served a common charge sheet that they were all Bhindranwale’s closest associates and comrades-in-arms en gaged in ‘waging war against the State’. They were, therefore, detained under the NSA and are now being tried at Jodhpur under the Terrorists-Affected Areas (Special Courts) Act of 1984. As we were curious regarding the extent of danger these hardcore ‘terrorists’ posed to the State ‘with the intention to establish a State independent from the Government of India to be known as Khalistan’’, we visited the homes of some of the Jodhpur detenues and met their families or relatives. The evidence collected established beyond doubt that none of the Jodhpur detenues we succeeded in profiling are ‘terrorists’ but rather all of them are completely innocent, ordinary persons, whose only crime was that they had all gone to or were coming from the Golden Temple— as devotes or pilgrims visiting the Golden Temple for the Guru Parb on June 3, 1984 or farmers gone to the Temple to deliver village donation of grain to the S.G.P.C. or students gone to pay obeisance at their holiest religious shrine, the Harmandir Sahib before their examinations or interviews. The following are the case studies of the Jodhpur detenus:

  1. RAMINDERPAL SINGH (Pet name: Happy), aged 20 years, son of Harcharan Singh Ragi, whom we have met already. When Harcharan Singh Ragi and Information Officer Narinder Pal Singh’s families came out of the basement on the 6th of June, they were all arrested from outside the Golden Temple and taken to the Army Camp. In the words of Harcharan Singh Ragi—“I was released on June 18. My wife and daughter were released on June 22, but not the boys. Again, on July 15, my eldest son was released but not Raminderpal, my second son. He was taken to Amritsar Jail from where he took his first year examination between August 8 and 22. Then he was shifted to Nabha Jailon August 31, 1984. On March 10, 1985, he was taken to Jodhpur Jail, from where he is taking the second year examinations now. There was no charge-sheet against any of us. But Raminderpal was falsely implicated as having been arrested from inside the Golden Temple and charged ‘with waging war against the State.’ He was put under the Amended NSA, which disregards the recommendations of the Advisory Board…. My son has been charged with ‘‘waging war against the State”. But he is one of the gentlest and known for his courteous behavior. He used to play hockey at the district level when he was at school. He is fond of reading, can play the harmonium and he is a good singer. Often he used to accompany me in the Golden Temple during our Kirtan sessions. He was a serious student and in December 1983 when there was a strike at Khalsa College, he left it in disgust and studied at home. What he earned doing overtime singing kirtans in Harmandir Sahib, he spent it for lessons in mathematics. His closest friends are Hindus. An ideal boy, so innocent, today he is in Jodhpur Jail accused as an ‘extremist’.

With great sadness, his wife said, “One who spent his life in struggle how could he bring up his children as extremists?

  1. KANWALJIT SINGH— We have met Kanwaljit before we left his story at the point when he sent telegram home on the night of June 3, 1984. Operation Blue Star started thereafter. Kanwaljit was arrested by the army from the Serai and was taken to an Army Camp where he was tortured and interrogated. “Why did you come to Golden Temple? Where have you come from? Did you have arms? Did you come to fight?’

Meanwhile, Kanwaljit and Manjit’s families in Delhi had no knowledge about their whereabouts, Kanwaljit’s mother visited Amritsar in the late June I 984 to inquire about her son. His father and brother did not go as it was feared that any male Sikh who would go to Amritsar to inquire would be arrested. At Amritsar, Kanwaljit’s mother saw a list of those killed, injured and arrested during Operation Bluestar with the S.G.P.C. In the list of those who had died, there were only 3 or 4 names, that of Bhindranwale, Amrik Singh and so on. The mother saw Kanwaijit and Manjit’s names in the list of those arrested.

She was told that Kanwaljit was being detained in an Army Camp. She went to the said Army Camp in July with her sister. She was not allowed to meet her son. She went twice more in July to the Army Camp but was not permitted to see or meet her son.

The Government first informed Kanwaljit’s family on September 15, that he had been transferred to the Nabha Jail on September 6. The parents went to meet him at Nabha Jail. They could have an interview with him twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In Nabha jail, Kanwaljit and many others were made to sign a common confessional statement and served a common charge-sheet alleging that he and his companion were armed terrorists, that they were followers of Bindranwale and that they had gathered to wage war against the Indian State in order to establish a separate State of Khalistan by violent means.

They were then transferred to Jodhpur Special Court. He has been put under NSA, detained for 2 years. Whereas in Nabha Jail, all relatives were permitted to visit, at Jodhpur only parents were allowed to visit once a week,

Kanwaljit was brought to Delhi on April 11, 1985 to take his examinations to reappear for B. Com. (Hons.) II year. The parents were allowed to meet him at Tihar Jail only after a lot of harassment and objections.

Kanwaljit is a man of few words. He does not mix much and has few friends, Manjit being the closest. Kanwaljit used to go to the NDMC Stadium at New Delhi every morning for swimming. On returning he used to play carrom and chess with Manjit and read chess books. Chess is his first love and he was winning awards in chess competitions. In 1982-83, he came second in the Khalsa College (Evening) Class tournament. In 1983-84, he again came second in the Inter-class Chess Tournament. He received a magnetic chess set as a prize from Raja Bhalinder Singh, who was President of the Indian Committee of the Asia Games, 1982. He used to participate in various chess tournaments in Delhi and rarely missed prize chess matches between well-known chess masters.

There is a photograph of Kanwaljit receiving a prize from Raja Bhalinder Singh. He looks simple, innocent and so straight-forward and honest. He is not an Amritdhari. Lately, he was very keen to find a job and that is why he was to attend an interview with the National Institute of Bank Management at Delhi on the morning of June 3, 1984 and again take an examination in the afternoon for the State Bank of India Regional Recruitment Group. He has also applied to the Railway Service Commission to take the written examinations for recruitment to non-technical popular categories such as signalers, ticket collectors, train/office clerks, etc. He was to appear for this examination on 26 February 1984 but it was postponed. It was to be held again on September 9, but this time Kanwaljit was under detention.

Kanwaljit enjoys a very good reputation. Mr. Shyam Lal Garg, Member of the Delhi Metropolitan Council from Tri Nagar and Mr. Sahib Singh Verma, Member of the Municipal Corporation from Lawrence Road, West Delhi, have both certified that Kanwaljit was personally known to them and that he was just a student and never participated in any party or political activity.

  1. BHUPINDER SINGH : aged 22 years, s/o Jiwan Singh r/o Vill, Rayya Tehsil Baba Bakola, P. S. Beas, Distt. Amritsar—Interview with the father, Jiwan Singh:

“I came here during partition from Sargodah, Distt. Multan, which is now in Pakistan. I have 3 sons and 2 daughters. I have a business of paints, steel trunks and agricultural implements. I have no agriculture land. I am the Pradhan of Akali Dal (Longowal) unit in village Rayya.

My youngest son Bhupinder used to manufacture steel almirahs.

He had taken part in the Rasta Roko movement, putting up posters, etc. but was not arrested then. But during the Constitution agitation of 1983 he was arrested and mercilessly beaten but he was released due to the intervention of Bhai Amrik Singh of the AISSF. That was his first contact with AISSF. And it was only after his brother, Tejender Singh’s arrest in a false case for which he was jailed and the case went on for 7 months that Bhupinder started visiting Darbar Sahib. After his brother’s arrest, because of the harassment of the police, he was careful and often he needs to clean out.

Finally, he himself was arrested at Kathiwali Bazar on June 6, 1984 after he had escaped from Golden Temple on June 3. He was taken to an Army Interrogation centre from where he was taken to Nabha Jail. The army subjected him to inhuman torture. When he was in Nabha Jail, he was taken to Lodha Kothi in Sangrur for 18 days. When I saw him, I could see that he had been terribly tortured but he wouldn’t tell us. There I learnt from him that he had taken Amrit and was doing Path daily, which he said gave him strength.

In all Bhupinder has been implicated in 8 cases, each of which is false:

(i) Today he is in Jodhpur jail because he is supposed to have been arrested from the Golden Temple for ‘waging war against the State’. But the police know that he was picked up from Kathiwali Bazaar outside Amritsar.

(ii) The Nirankari murder case of village Khabbe Rajputana near P. S. Mehta of 1979-80, when Bhupinder was just a school boy. It is obvious that this case has been planted on him retrospectively.

(iii) Another Nirankari murder case of village Ghanupur Kaleke, P.S. Chaherta, near Metha Chowk of 1980.

(iv) Mannawale Railway Station, F lying Mail Murder Case of Sub-Inspector in 1982.

(v) Encounter of an ‘extremist’ group with the Railway Protection Force at Rayya Railway Station.

(vi) Nirankari Bomb case of Rayya—Bhupinder was at home at 4-5 p.m. when the bomb exploded. Bhupinder’s name was not there in the initial list of suspects but it was added later.

(vii) Sadhuram Bomb Case—which occurred at 10 p.m. when Bhupinder was actually at home.

(viii) Dhyyanpur Bridge Explosion case in which Bhupinder’s name was added to the list of the three accused.

At this point, Jiwan Singh brought out the photograph of his son Bhupinder. AN AMAZINGLY GENTLE AND INNOCENT FACE FOR SUCH A SUPPOSEDLY HARDENED CRIMI- NAL. Bhupinder’s mother has-given up eating certain dishes which the boy was fond of. Very gently, she told us that the food the boys get in jail is so bad.

Jiwan Singh continued, and went on to narrate the harassments that he and his family have undergone:

“After the Operation Bluestar, the CRP visited my house 3 times in 24 hours and raided it but found nothing. They abused my wife and daughters and daughter-in-law.

After a couple of days, the Punjab Police came and took me and my eldest son Gurvinder Pal to Jondiala, P. S. and released us after a couple of days. Another couple of days, the Punjab Police came again and took away two of my sons Gurvinder Pal and Tejinder for interrogation and detained them at Rayya P.S. for 20 days.

But we were not to have peace. A couple of days after Gurvinder and Tejinder’s removal, came the army, who took me, my son-in-law and the son of my brother-in-law to the Army camp at Satwiala College, Baba Bakola. We were made to sit in the hot sun. We were terrorized and then released.”’

The old man said with the great bittiness, ‘““We are gulams (slaves). Whenever they made signs, we are taken.”

  1. KASHMIR SINGH s/o Gaijjan Singh, r/o Vill. & P. O. Baba Balia, P.S. Beas, Distt. Amritsar, aged 50 years—Interview with Smt. Jasbir Kaur, 45 years, wife of Kashmir Singh.

“My husband went to Darbar Sahib for the Guru Purb. He did not return for about a month, when I learnt from a policeman who came to tell me that he had been arrested and was in Nabha Jail. I went to see him on 20.7.84 and heard that he had been picked up from Bazaar Kathian on June 6.” (Obvicusly, he too like Bhupinder Singh of Rayya who was arrested from outside the State’—a middle aged small farmer hardly owning one and half acres of land and four small children to feed and not belonging to any political organisations. He was too dangerous to move about freely and knew so much that he had to be repeatedly tortured at Lodha Kothi. “He was taken twice to Lodha Kothi and tortured for 12 days each time by all the well-known methods.”

“I met him again on October 31. Since then J have not been able to see him since I am too poor to afford it.”

  1. RAM SINGH, s/o Late Makhan Singh, r/o Vill. & P.O. Baba Bakola, aged 30 years— His uncle Sulakhan Singh (who looks after the family) was interviewed:

“Ram Singh is the only son of widow. He has only 1/9 acre of land belongs to a poor peasant family. He has studied only upto class 8 and was employed in a small capacity in the Government depot. He is a bachelor.

He had gone to Darbar Sahib for the Guru Purb. He was arrested from Golden Temple charged, with ‘waging war’, taken to Amritsar and Nabha Jails and is now in Jodhpur jail. There was never any case against him. He was extremely well-behaved. He is totally innocent.

The police have been coming and repeatedly interrogating his mother and uncle.

  1. GULZAR SINGH, s/o Late Arjun Singh, r/o Vill. & P. O. Baba Bakola, aged 33 years—Interviewed his uncle Rattan Singh, a granthi.

They have a joint family. Guizar is married and has a little girl, aged one and a half years. He is a preacher and does the Akhand Path in the Gurudwara. He went to Golden Temple for Guru Purb and was arrested from there and charged with ‘waging war against the State’.

Gulzar is a simple person. He studied in an orphanage in Amritsar.

  1. MANJIT SINGH s/o Bawa Singh.
  2. RANDIR SINGH s/o Mangal Singh
  3. RANDIR SINGH s/o Bahadur Singh

r/o village Dehriwal, Kiran, P..S. Kalanpur, Distt. Gurdaspur.

These 3 young boys took the village donation of grain to Darbar Sahib for the Guru Purb, but were arrested and charged with ‘waging war against the State’ and are now proclaimed as terrorists and lodged in Jodhpur Jail.

  1. BAKSHISH SINGH, s/o Hon. Capt. Ram Singh, r/o Vill. Butala, P. S. Dhilwan, Distt. Kapurthala, aged 43 years.

Interview with Bakshish Singh’s sister, Smt Hardev Kaur, a widow with two children.

“My brother Bakshish Singh was a manager of Punjab & Sind Bank branch at Guru Ramdas Serai, Golden Temple, Amritsar. He was receiving a salary of Rs. 3000 per month. He was a devout Sikh, had taken Amrit and used to preach in the villages and exhort people to take Amrit. He was very generous and used to help people.

Our mother is 65-year-old and father is ill and now in Patiala Hospital. We have no land.

On June 7, 1982 my brother had organized a religious meeting at the village, but he did not speak. Early the next day he was arrested for the first time in his life, on a false report that he was propagating Khalistan. He was detained at P. S. Dhilwana and then sent to Interrogation Centre, Amritsar for one week, where he was severely beaten. Later he was taken to Kapurthala jail and was released only after 1 year between June 1983 and end of May 1984 when Bakshish rejoined his work at the Punjab and Sind Bank, Amritsar.

On June 1, 1984 bakshish had gone to the Golden Temple with his wife for her treatment for turn our and they were in Guru Ram Das Serai, trom where both were arrested on June 6. His wife was taken to Jallandhar jail, kept there for 22 days and then taken to Hospital and operated upon.

Bakshish Singh was first taken to Amritsar Jail and after two months to Nabha Jail and after 7 months there, and mercilessly tortured at Lodha Kothi where he was kept for 15 to 20 days, and then he was shifted to Jodhpur Jail on January 11, 1985. We have not met him since then.

The family is so impoverished that Bakshish’s two sons could not continue their studies. The elder son (Iqbal) along with his mother are in Patiala Rajindra Hospital suffering from mental depression. The Bank has not paid Bakshish Singh anything and has shown him as absent. We have about 5 to 6 acres of land for the entire joint family.

We are being constantly harassed. Earlier the Army used to come and interrogate us and now the police visit us every other day.”

We have here documented for the first tine eye-witness accounts of what really happened when the Indian Army attacked the Golden Temple complex in the first week of June 1984. It is one of the most gory and tragic chapters in the entire history of modern India. The brutalities, the killings, the desecration and destruction of their most sacred place, have left a most bitter memory and feeling of deep resentment in the mind of every Sikh.

  1. Some retrospection

At the end of it all, two questions are asked by the Sikhs of Punjab. Was the Army action necessary and unavoidable? Secondly, if unavoidable, could it not have taken a different form, avoiding all the destruction and the bloodshed and the brutalities?

Kripal Singh, President of Khalsa Dewan, and Amritsar, told us—“If the Government had been sincere in its efforts in solving the Punjab problem, it would have solved it long ago even before the Blue Star Oppression Bluestar.

Operation, and there would have been no cause for the Akalis and others to organize Morchas of the thousands of the people, from time to time, and the extremists would have been isolated and it would have become known as to who were the extremists, what kind of men they were, and what they had been doing. The Government could have negotiated with them. If the Government could talk with Laldenga of Mizos and extremists of the Nagaland, who had been fighting with our military for the last 31 years, then what was the difficulty in talking to the extremists of Punjab and asking them as to what they wanted, what they were fighting and why they were collecting arms?”

Similarly, S. S. Bhagowalia who is the Vice-President of the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (Punjab) was extremely forthright, ““when the government in 1948 could control and capture Hyderabad from the Nizam who wanted to secede from independent India without any violence and killings of the common people, why this Government could not capture Bhindranwale with tact, without any damage to the Golden Temple? This has created tension and anger amongst the minds of the people’. Surinder Singh Ragi gave another example—‘‘The Indian Army had captured 93,000 soldiers of Pakistan army in Bangladesh in 1971 without bloodshed. Was bloodshed then absolutely necessary at the Golden Temple to flush out a hundred or so terrorists?”

Hazara Singh Vadale, an employee of the SGPC, echoed a common sentiment. “The way the government of Independent country attacked the Golden Temple reminded us of the medieval time when our religion was attacked and we are persecuted. Thousands of women, children, pilgrims, had gathered here on June 3 for Guru Purb. They had no connection with politics, why they shot down?”

Kripal Singh elaborating on the excesses committed said: “At the time of Blue Star Act. it could be known how many died of those who were fighting with the military but the fact is that due to Guru Purb Day hundreds of pilgrims had come and were staying in the premises of the Darbar Sahib. There were children and women among them. These pilgrims were unarmed and the military attacked them and killed them. Thereafter the military did not allow their dead bodies to be cremated by the relatives nor handed over the same to them. Their dead bodies were insulted. No effort was made to record their names and addresses. Now it has created a lot of problem. For example, if any deceased had any insurance or bank balance or any land dispute, his heirs require death certificate but in absence of any record of it, they did not get any compensation. Even in the history of military wars, the people are allowed to take the dead bodies from each other’s territories by showing white flags. When General Dyer killed people in Jallianwala Bagh, he also allowed the dead bodies to be taken by the relatives. But, strangely, our own government and our own military killed our own people and did not even return dead bodies to the relatives.”

Shiv Singh Khushpuri, 65 years, a member of the S.G.P.C. from Gurdaspur district, said, “It was the duty of the State to identify the bodies of those who died in Operation Blue Star. After the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the British Government identified those killed, handed over their bodies to the next kin and paid Rs. 2000 as compensation for every person killed in the incident. Whereas in Blue Star Operation, the present government of an apparently independent country has not only not identified those killed or missing, rather they are harassing and persecuting the families and friends of those who are reportedly missing.”

  1. S. Bhagowalia throws light on the efforts of the Government to suppress information. ‘“The doctors who conducted the post-mortem of the victims of the army action at Golden Temple were simply terrorized. If there were 20 bullets in a body, they were forced to record only two bullet wounds, under the threat of being shot.” This only indicates the extent of massacre that took place and the ferocity with which the Army undertook the operation. The common feeling in Punjab is that it was indeed not an Operation against Bhindranwale and other terrorists, it was an attack on the Sikhs “to teach them a lesson” so that they would never again raise their head or voice of protest.