replace the three bullets fired from the .303 rifle,” Deol is quoted as saying. “He wanted to show he had actually never fired, he wanted to collect proof that all his bullets were intact. He was saying he had acted against the nation.”
Assistant commissioner of police Keval Singh took early action against looters on the evening of October 31. Seeing the situation go out of hand, he asked for permission at 8.32pm to open fire. That permission never came. Fifty minutes later, at 9.22pm, came a message that he was being taken off duty.
Suri argues that the signals were clear from top levels that the police action against looters and killers would not be welcomed. Such failure was ultimately ensured by “passive aggression” from Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded his slain mother as prime minister, the book claims.
Suri puts together interviews, records and his own experiences as witness to make the case that the killing itself was actively organised by senior leaders from the Congress party — unchecked by the top leadership.
Rajiv Gandhi was sworn in as prime minister on the evening of October 31. Suri says his firmest action against the killing came at 5.30pm on the evening of November 2 when he summoned then Lt. Governor P.G. Gavai and said all killings must end within 15 minutes. By then, almost all the killing was done, Suri says in his book.
Rajiv Gandhi did make speeches, but “the Sikhs of Delhi did not need to hear speeches on the right thing to do, they needed the right thing done”, says Suri in the book. He says that Rajiv Gandhi “followed up with decisions that were guaranteed to deny justice later”.
The first such was the order to cut short an inquiry into the killings by Ved Marwah, later the police commissioner. That inquiry was on the point of nailing top officers in an official record of widespread police failures.
It was Rajiv Gandhi who ended that inquiry, the book says. “It’s inconceivable that the prime minister might open the newspaper one morning to find that some junior official had taken such a decision unknown to him.”
The book argues that action against at least some of the guilty was still possible on the basis of two sets of records: one showing police awareness of the violence, and the other the failure to act on that awareness. Taken together these point to criminal negligence that is actionable under the Indian Penal Code, Suri argues.
Specifically, he says criminal prosecution against government-controlled Doordarshan is still possible for “holding the megaphone” to calls for murder. The book cites records to say that on its own admission Doordarshan broadcast that call 18 times, though Suri says people who watched television that morning say it was more than that.
Prosecution must be launched to bring some official acknowledgement of massive wrongdoing by the government that led to the murder of 3,000 Sikhs in the city, the book says.