New Delhi, January 17
Tribune, Chandigarh

Senior Congress leader Jagdish Tytler had led a mob that killed two Sikhs at a gurdwara in the walled city and also burnt the shrine during the 1984 riots, an eyewitness told the Justice Nanavati Commission today.Mr Surinder Singh, who was the then Head Granthi of Gurdwara Pulbangash near Azad Market, said the mob, led by Congress M.P. Jagdish Tytler, attacked the shrine a day after the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

“He incited the mob to burn the gurdwara and kill Sikhs,” the witness said in an affidavit filed before the commission probing the riots that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi.

The mob carrying lathis, iron rods and kerosene attacked the gurdwara and set it on fire on being incited by Mr Tytler, he said.

The rioters, he said, killed Thakur Singh, a retired Delhi police Inspector who was an employee of the gurdwara management committee. The mob also burnt alive Badal Singh, a gurdwara “sewadar”, by putting a burning tyre around his neck, he added.

The witness told the commission that rioters were raising slogans like “khoon ka badla khoon se lenge,” “Sardar gaddar hain”, “Mar do jala do”. Some people in the mob were carrying Congress flags, he added.

“I was watching the entire incident helplessly from the top floor of the gurdwara. The gurdwara was set on fire but the blaze had not reached the top floor,” he said.

Mr Surinder Singh said he and his family members were rescued by some Muslim neighbours in the night. After a week, when he returned to his house, he found that his house was also looted by the mob.

Mr Tytler, he said, came back to the gurdwara on November 10 and asked him to put his signatures on “two sheets of paper which I refused to sign.” Social activist Jaya Shrivastava, who also appeared before the commission today, said on the basis of her post-riot visits to various colonies and camps in the Capital she concluded that the communal violence was “organised”.

Ms Shrivastava said: “Most colonies were attacked at about the same time, means for killing and arson were readily available, and in most cases the police played a dubious role”.

The Sikhs had removed name plates from their houses to avoid the fury of rioters, but surprisingly the mobs reached the particular houses with certainty, the witness told the panel.

In all, there seemed to be a “sickening methodology” behind the “intensely tragic” episode, she said. UNI