The Badal Dal has short­listed for­mer bu­reau­crat Dar­bara Singh Guru as its nom­i­nee for the re­served con­stituency of Fate­hgarh Sahib. His name fea­tures in a Pun­jab and Haryana High Court pe­ti­tion as an ac­cused in the killing of 4 Sikh youth in in­dis­crim­i­nate fir­ing in Nako­dar in 1986. The Badal Dal of Parkash Singh Badal and his son Sukhbir Singh Badal have per­fected the art of rub­bing salt on the wounds of Sikh vic­tim fam­i­lies –ei­ther by suf­fer­ing from am­ne­sia or grant­ing po­lit­i­cal ho­n­our to per­pe­tra­tors of hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions. Time to wake up. This is painful read­ing, but read you must.

If you live in Fate­hgarh Sahib par­lia­men­tary con­stituency in Pun­jab and you know that one of your can­di­dates from the Badal Dal is a liar and an al­leged con­spir­a­tor in the killings of four Sikh youth in Nako­dar in 1986, what would you do? If you live else­where in Pun­jab what would you do? If you are a part of the Di­as­pora what would you do? If you are a friend of the Sikhs, what would you do? If you re­spect hu­man rights, what would you do?

Like in other parts of In­dia, for­mer bu­reau­crats, for­mer crick­eters, for­mer mil­i­tary per­son­nel and for­mer ac­tors are be­ing in­ducted into pol­i­tics to gain favour of hav­ing a wide­spread can­vas of can­di­dates. Notwith­stand­ing the past of the nom­i­nees, Pun­jab is no dif­fer­ent.

In May 2019, Fate­hgarh Sahib vot­ers are likely to see a plethora of ‘for­m­ers’ of many po­lit­i­cal par­ties.  It is an­other story that the last Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment from this con­stituency was a for­mer diplo­mat -Harinder Singh Khalsa, who was con­spic­u­ous by his ab­sence through­out the five years of the last Par­lia­ment, leav­ing some con­stituents mock­ing him on so­cial me­dia, “Our MP is miss­ing. Please help to find him.”

“You have to be heart­less to even think that Dar­bara Singh Guru is not guilty of com­plic­ity in the ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing and de­struc­tion of all ev­i­dence re­lat­ing to the mur­ders per­pe­trated by this state of­fi­cial in Nako­dar ” 

Baldev Singh, fa­ther of Ravin­der Singh, while speak­ing to WSN

Dar­bara Singh Guru was the of­fi­ci­at­ing Deputy Com­mis­sioner of Ja­land­har in Feb­ru­ary 1986.  As the Dis­trict Mag­is­trate was ab­sent in the first week of Feb­ru­ary of that year, he was also the of­fi­ci­at­ing dis­trict mag­is­trate.

Fol­low­ing sac­ri­lege on 2 Feb­ru­ary 1986 in Gur­d­wara Guru Ar­jan Sahib in Nako­dar, Dar­bara Singh Guru signed the cur­few or­ders for a cur­few on 3 Feb­ru­ary.  He or­dered the pro­tes­tors to go to a dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tion where the po­lice opened in­dis­crim­i­nate fir­ing.  It was he, who through his machi­na­tions shielded the Hindu mis­cre­ants who had com­mit­ted sac­ri­lege there.  It was right un­der his nose that the record of po­lice in­juries was fudged.

The four Sikh youth ex­tra­ju­di­cial killed on 4 Feb­ru­ary 1986 were Ravin­der Singh, son of Baldev Singh, Har­min­der Singh son of Shankar Singh, Bald­hir Singh son of Kar­tar Singh,  Jhilman Singh son of Mo­hin­der Singh.

As Dar­bara Singh Guru was the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer on that day, he or­dered po­lice fir­ing on in­no­cent and peace­ful Sikh pro­test­ers march­ing through the streets to reach the Gur­d­wara Sahib to take the des­e­crated Sarups of Guru Granth Sahib to Goind­wal Sahib as per Sikh cus­tom.  Four Sikh youth were killed, with one de­lib­er­ately shot at close range in the mouth. Shock­ingly, it was Dar­bara Singh Guru who or­dered the con­duct of post mortem of the four Sikh youth in the mid­dle of the in­ter­ven­ing night of 4-5 Feb­ru­ary.  Not con­tent, to shield the po­lice per­son­nel, in the name of law and or­der, it was Dar­bara Singh Guru, who or­dered the cre­ma­tion of the dead bod­ies incog­nito, with no ref­er­ence to their names or iden­ti­ties in the cre­ma­tion ground records and also not al­low­ing the fam­i­lies to have a last glimpse of the de­parted souls.  The cur­few con­tin­ued for 13 days. The Mu­nic­i­pal Com­mit­tee which man­ages the cre­ma­tion ground in the city has no record of any cre­ma­tions dur­ing the pe­riod. The reg­is­ter is blank for those 13 days!

Ravin­der Singh’s fa­ther Baldev Singh was the only per­son who man­aged to reach the hos­pi­tal where the post-mortem was done dur­ing the night.  With the city un­der cur­few, he started walk­ing to the hos­pi­tal and be­cause of his in­sis­tence; he was taken to the hos­pi­tal in a po­lice jeep. Once he reached there, he stuck to his guns and told the po­lice that he is not leav­ing with­out the dead body of his son and other youth killed. The po­lice, un­der in­struc­tions from the ad­min­is­tra­tion, read Dar­bara Singh Guru, cheated him. They told him to get po­lice clear­ance. He walked to the po­lice sta­tion. In the mean­while, all four bod­ies were dumped in a CRPF truck and taken to the cre­ma­tion grounds. No de­tails were en­tered.  When Baldev Singh reached the cre­ma­tion grounds, his heart sank. All four bod­ies were burn­ing in one pyre.

“You have to be heart­less to even think that Dar­bara Singh Guru is not guilty of com­plic­ity in the ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing and de­struc­tion of all ev­i­dence re­lat­ing to the mur­ders per­pe­trated by this state of­fi­cial in Nako­dar ,” a crest­fallen Baldev Singh told The World Sikh News.

 For Pun­jabi ver­sion of this ar­ti­cle, click here

The dis­gust­ing tale does not end there. One of the four bod­ies was not iden­ti­fied at all. Per­haps some other in­di­vid­ual was cre­mated!

Doggedly pur­su­ing the case of their en­gi­neer-as­pi­rant son Ravin­der Singh, who was one of the youth killed, his fam­ily has been cry­ing hoarse since the last three decades.  Mem­bers of the Pun­jab As­sem­bly Kan­war Sandhu, Harvin­der Singh Phoolka, Gur­par­tap Singh Wadala and Kul­tar Singh Sand­hwan came to their res­cue by rais­ing the is­sue in the As­sem­bly. Dr Dharamvir Gandhi took it up with the In­dian Home Min­is­ter Ra­j­nath Singh. The Badal Dal kept quiet. All cor­re­spon­dence and pleas to the Cap­tain Amarinder Singh gov­ern­ment have hereto­fore fallen on deaf ears.

As has been re­vealed by the Speaker of the Pun­jab As­sem­bly in the last ses­sion of the As­sem­bly, the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion Re­port was sur­rep­ti­tiously placed on the table of the Pun­jab As­sem­bly on 5 March 2001 by the then Badal Dal gov­ern­ment, with­out the Ac­tion Taken Re­port. Ob­vi­ously, to shield Dar­bara Singh Guru, who by then had be­come close to the Badals and had joined the party, no ac­tion was taken; so how could they have filed the Ac­tion Taken Re­port. More­over, the Con­gress party -the op­po­si­tion party at that time, too, was pre­oc­cu­pied with ‘sav­ing the morale of the po­lice’ and col­luded with the Badals to have ab­solutely no dis­cus­sion what­so­ever on the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion Re­port. They too have had many skele­tons in their cup­board. Not very sur­pris­ingly, even the pre­sent Amarinder Singh gov­ern­ment had no time to dis­cuss this re­port. If in­ci­dents of sac­ri­lege of 2015 in Be­hbal Kalan war­rant an SIT, why is the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment shy­ing from one for the Nako­dar 1986 fir­ing?

The Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Re­port sub­mit­ted to the then gov­ern­ment on 31 Oc­to­ber 1986, among other things, cat­e­gor­i­cally states that the po­lice in­jury records were ma­nip­u­lated, no un­law­ful as­sem­bly was de­clared, no dis­per­sal or­ders were given, no at­tempt was made by the of­fi­ci­at­ing Dis­trict Mag­is­trate Dar­bara Singh Guru to take pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures to avert any un­to­ward in­ci­dent and that Dar­bara Singh Guru got post-mortem con­ducted with­out iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the dead bod­ies. More­over, he also did not or­der the ar­rest of those Hindu mis­cre­ants who were armed to the teeth and were openly fo­ment­ing trou­ble.  WSN has placed all doc­u­ments with this sad story.

“Dar­bara Singh Guru or any­one like him must never be tol­er­ated as a nom­i­nee, leave alone as a peo­ples’ rep­re­sen­ta­tive and law­maker. The peo­ple of Pun­jab must give a be­fit­ting re­ply to the Badals.”

Baldev Singh, fa­ther of mar­tyr Ravin­der Singh

A key con­clu­sion of the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh In­quiry Com­mis­sion was that,  “….the or­der that ef­fec­tive fir­ing should be on the lower part of the body was to­tally ig­nored and it ap­pears that the per­sons who died were aimed at the vi­tal parts of the bod­ies so as to kill them.”

 For Pun­jabi ver­sion of this ar­ti­cle, click here

Ravin­der Singhs’ fa­ther Baldev Singh’s pe­ti­tion seek­ing reg­is­tra­tion of FIR un­der sec­tion 307 (at­tempt to mur­der) against Dar­bara Singh Guru and oth­ers will be taken up by the Pun­jab and Haryana High Court on 2 April 2019.

Speak­ing to WSN, Baldev Singh was in tears. He said, “Dar­bara Singh Guru or any­one like him must never be tol­er­ated as a nom­i­nee, leave alone as a peo­ples’ rep­re­sen­ta­tive and law­maker. The peo­ple of Pun­jab must give a be­fit­ting re­ply to the Badals.”

The vic­tim fam­i­lies and Pun­jab await with abated breath to know whether Dar­bara Singh Guru will file nom­i­na­tion pa­pers from Fate­hgarh Sahib con­stituency or ap­ply for an­tic­i­pa­tory bail or will the High Court or­der the reg­is­tra­tion of an FIR and his im­me­di­ate ar­rest?

At around the end of this Global TV video, Dar­bar Singh Guru de­nies his in­volve­ment in the Feb­ru­ary 1986 in­ci­dent. 

When Global TV con­fronted Dar­bar Singh Guru about his role, he had the gump­tion to deny be­ing the DC at the time. Lis­ten to the fag end of the video placed in this story. A per­son who has been the Prin­ci­pal Sec­re­tary to Chief Min­is­ter Parkash Singh Badal and has been ap­pointed a mem­ber-sec­re­tary of the Guru Granth Sahib World Uni­ver­sity has cat­e­gor­i­cally de­nied his pres­ence in an in­ter­ac­tion with Pun­jabi Daily Ajit. The Badal Dal thinks that we are ei­ther too naive or stu­pid.  The con­sci­en­tious peo­ple of Pun­jab and the con­stituents of Fate­hgarh Sahib have to prove oth­er­wise.

With his nom­i­na­tion, will the Badal Dal heap an­other in­jus­tice and in­sult on  the peo­ple of Pun­jab?

 If you like our sto­ries, do fol­low WSN on Face­book.

When SSP Izhar Alam was pro­posed as a nom­i­nee for the last Pun­jab As­sem­bly elec­tions, there was an out­cry in Pun­jab; his name was dropped and his wife was nom­i­nated in­stead. Will his­tory be re­peated?