Did Fate­hgarh Sahib SAD can­di­date –Dar­bara Singh Guru play any role in the 1986 Nako­dar fir­ing in which 4 Sikh youth were killed? Did Ja­land­har SAD can­di­date -Cha­ran­jit Singh At­wal, as speaker, table the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion Re­port on the Nako­dar killings and sac­ri­lege with­out An Ac­tion Taken Re­port, in 2001, un­der pres­sure of the Badals?  Is the Badal Dal not guilty of sup­press­ing the re­port and com­plic­ity in shield­ing the ac­cused by plac­ing them in high of­fices? Read WSN Big Story based on analy­sis of Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Re­port and re­sponses of Badal Dal lead­er­ship in re­cent times, which we have been metic­u­lously track­ing.

Thirty-three years ago, 4 Sikh youth pro­test­ers -Ravin­der Singh Lit­tran, Bald­hir Singh Ram­garh, Jhilman Singh Gor­sian and Har­min­der Singh Chalu­per were in­dis­crim­i­nately fired upon and killed in Nako­dar on 4 Feb­ru­ary 1986, af­ter the in­ci­dent of sac­ri­lege of Guru Granth Sahib in Gur­d­wara Guru Ar­jan Sahib Mo­halla Guru Nanak Pura. Bow­ing to pub­lic pres­sure, the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion was formed, which sub­mit­ted its re­port, in­dict­ing the po­lice for un­nec­es­sary fir­ing and the ad­min­is­tra­tion for be­ing lack­adaisi­cal and in­ac­tiv­ity.

Peo­ple’s mem­ory is gen­er­ally be­lieved to be short. In the 1986 Nako­dar po­lice fir­ing case which left four Sikh youth dead, this is be­ing proved wrong. Peo­ple’s mem­ory is as fresh as yes­ter­day, whereas Akali lead­ers suf­fer from am­ne­sia.

A thor­ough read­ing of the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Re­port, sub­mit­ted to the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment on 31 Oc­to­ber 1986, leads WSN to con­clude that Dabara Singh Guru is cul­pa­ble of con­spir­acy to the ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing of four Sikh youth by acts of omis­sion and com­mis­sion in Feb­ru­ary 1986.

The man­ner in which the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Re­port into the killing of the four Sikh youth was han­dled by Cha­ran­jit Singh At­wal, as the speaker of the Pun­jab As­sem­bly shows us that the Speaker and his of­fice were in league with the Badal Dal in sup­press­ing the doc­u­ment and it was sur­rep­ti­tiously tabled on 5 March 2001 with­out dis­cus­sion and de­bate. At­wal too is a con­spir­a­tor to the sup­pres­sion of jus­tice to that ex­tent.

Parkash Singh Badal was Chief Min­is­ter of the state from 1997 to 2002 and then from 2007 to 2017? Were 15 years in power not suf­fi­cient to taken ac­tion on the ba­sis of the find­ings of the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion re­port?

The Badal Dal lead­er­ship –Parkash Singh Badal and Sukhbir Singh Badal have to ex­plain to the peo­ple of Pun­jab as to why no ac­tion has been taken all these decades? Sur­jit Singh Bar­nala led the Akali gov­ern­ment from 1985 to 1987. Parkash Singh Badal was Chief Min­is­ter of the state from 1997 to 2002 and then from 2007 to 2017? Were 15 years in power not suf­fi­cient to taken ac­tion on the ba­sis of the find­ings of the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion re­port?

Even be­fore his can­di­da­ture for the Fate­hgarh Sahib Par­lia­men­tary con­stituency was an­nounced, Dar­bara Singh Guru -for­mer bu­reau­crat and con­fi­dante of the Badals –hav­ing been the Prin­ci­pal Sec­re­tary of Parkash Singh Badal from 2007 to No­vem­ber 2011, cat­e­gor­i­cally stated that he was not pre­sent in Nako­dar when the po­lice fir­ing oc­curred.

When Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal pres­i­dent Sukhbir Singh Badal an­nounced his can­di­da­ture at Khanna, while ad­dress­ing the me­dia, a frus­trated Dar­bara Singh Guru skipped ques­tions on the Nako­dar fir­ing in­ci­dent. When jour­nal­ists per­sisted, he said, “I did not play any role in the fir­ing. Read the Gur­nam Singh re­port.” Since then, he has been re­peat­ing the same line.

The other can­di­date who shows signs of frus­tra­tion is the oth­er­wise cool and calm for­mer speaker of the Pun­jab As­sem­bly Cha­ran­jit Singh At­wal, now the of­fi­cial can­di­date from the Ja­land­har con­stituency. His first re­ac­tion, while talk­ing to the me­dia on 27 March was, “It is an old in­ci­dent. I do not re­mem­ber it.” Sub­se­quently on 8 April he said, “No re­port can be tabled on the house, with­out an ac­tion taken re­port.” Now on 16 April he was say­ing, “My job was only to table the re­port, which I did. I know noth­ing about what ac­tion the gov­ern­ment had taken or not taken.”

PTC spreads FAKE NEWS – You are us­ing a plain Po­lice Lie to deny killing of 4 Sikh youths. Can you tell us for what Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion was formed? Re­port of which is al­ready in the pub­lic do­main and have been pub­lished by news pa­pers. 
1/​2 pic.twit­ter.com/​AQNokjYbb7

— Saka Nako­dar:4Feb86 ਸਾਕਾ ਨਕੋਦਰ:੪ਫ਼ਰਵਰੀ੮੬ (@sakanako­dar) April 15, 2019

Be­fore it was the turn of the Party pres­i­dent Sukhbir Singh Badal to smil­ingly skip the ques­tion on Nako­dar fir­ing, PTC ran fake news on April 13 on the ba­sis of an old RTI re­ply sent by then DSP Nako­dar Mukesh Ku­mar on 17 Jan­u­ary 2018, re­peat­ing ad nau­seam, “No in­ci­dent of fir­ing took place in Feb­ru­ary 1986 in Nako­dar. No­body was killed at all.” Ba­sic norms of jour­nal­ism were not fol­lowed. No re­search was done what­so­ever. It was a clas­sic fake news about which no com­plaint has been lodged so far with the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion of In­dia, even though the mat­ter is sub­ju­dice as the case will come up for pre­lim­i­nary third hear­ing in the Pun­jab and Haryana High Court on 8 May 2019, as the Court seeks Part II of the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion Re­port.

World Sikh News pre­sents facts and seeks an­swers to the many ques­tions we pose. Our ‘med­i­cine’ of ques­tions should re­lieve the am­ne­sia of the Badal Dal lead­er­ship.

The Pres­i­dent of the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal Sukhbir Singh Badal, when con­fronted by the me­dia on the sub­ject, po­litely de­clined, “I know noth­ing about this case, hence I can­not com­ment.”

World Sikh News pre­sents facts and seeks an­swers to the many ques­tions we pose. Our ‘med­i­cine’ of ques­tions should re­lieve the am­ne­sia of the Badal Dal lead­er­ship.

Dar­bara Singh Guru has to ac­count for the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

Did your ad­min­is­tra­tion not cre­mate all the four bod­ies on one fu­neral pyre on 5 Feb­ru­ary 1986 morn­ing with­out al­low­ing the fam­i­lies of four young men killed to have a last look be­fore cre­ma­tion? Were you pre­sent in the Nako­dar po­lice sta­tion when these or­ders were given? Whom were you try­ing to pro­tect?

1. You were the ad­di­tional deputy com­mis­sioner but on 2 Feb­ru­ary 1986 on­wards, were you not of­fi­ci­at­ing as the dis­trict mag­is­trate cum deputy com­mis­sioner of Ja­land­har? Were you not posted to mon­i­tor the de­vel­op­ments in Nako­dar sub­se­quent to the burn­ing of 5 Sarups of Guru Granth Sahib in Guru Ar­jan Sahib Gur­d­wara on 2 Feb­ru­ary 1986 by mis­cre­ant el­e­ments.
2. As the of­fi­ci­at­ing dis­trict mag­is­trate, did you not sign the cur­few or­ders in Nako­dar on 3 Feb­ru­ary 1986?
3. Even though there was ten­sion in the town due to the set­ting on fire of 5 Sarups of Guru Granth Sahib, you did not or­der the ar­rest or even pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion of the al­leged cul­prits named by the Sikh San­gat and the Sikh lead­ers? Was there any rea­son for not do­ing so?
4. As there was ten­sion in the Nako­dar town, what were your com­pul­sions about al­low­ing mis­cre­ants and anti-so­cial el­e­ments to take out a march on 3 Feb­ru­ary, even when Sec­tion 144 had al­ready been pro­mul­gated in the town?
5. On 4 Feb­ru­ary 1986, did you or any of your sub­or­di­nates ver­bally ask the pro­tes­tors to change the route of the protest march, with the ex­press malafide in­ten­tion of fram­ing a con­fronta­tion be­tween the Sikh pro­test­ers and the fa­nat­ics who were op­pos­ing the Sikhs?
6. Did you not or­der the lo­cal hos­pi­tal au­thor­i­ties to con­duct post mortem on the bod­ies of the de­ceased in the mid­dle of the in­ter­ven­ing night on 4-5 Feb­ru­ary 1986? Does this post-mortem or­der not have your sig­na­tures in your ca­pac­ity as act­ing deputy com­mis­sioner?
7. Did your ad­min­is­tra­tion not cre­mate all the four bod­ies on one fu­neral pyre on 5 Feb­ru­ary 1986 morn­ing with­out al­low­ing the fam­i­lies of four young men killed to have a last look be­fore cre­ma­tion? Were you pre­sent in the Nako­dar po­lice sta­tion when these or­ders were given? Whom were you try­ing to pro­tect?
8. As per post-mortem re­ports, only 2 vic­tims were iden­ti­fied. Baldev Singh, the fa­ther of the third vic­tim Ravin­der Singh Lit­tran, who man­aged to reach on foot, iden­ti­fied his son on the morn­ing of 5 Feb­ru­ary and claimed his body for cre­ma­tion. Why was the body not handed over to his fa­ther?
9. The iden­tity of the body that was cre­mated as of the fourth vic­tim is still a mys­tery. There is a no record in the cre­ma­tion grounds for a pe­riod of 1-15 Feb­ru­ary 1986 re­gard­ing the cre­ma­tions that took place dur­ing the pe­riod? As dis­trict mag­is­trate what ef­fort did you make to find the iden­tity of 4th uniden­ti­fied vic­tim? Why are there no en­tries in the reg­is­ter of the cre­ma­tion grounds of the said pe­riod, when this is re­quired by law? Who in­structed the cre­ma­tion au­thor­i­ties not to write any­thing in the reg­is­ter? As­sum­ing there were no other deaths in this pe­riod, ex­cept the four Sikh youth killed by the po­lice, why are their names also not men­tioned?
10. In an in­ter­view you have claimed that the then SP (Op­er­a­tions) Ash­wini Ku­mar Sharma of CRPF told the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion that though the DC was less than a kilo­me­tre away, he did not make any ef­forts to seek per­mis­sion to fire. Was this a set up? If not, then what de­part­men­tal ac­tion was taken against the SP (Op­er­a­tions)? What did you do the fol­low­ing day? Did you send an in­ter­nal se­cret re­port to the Chief Sec­re­tary of the state as to what your sub­or­di­nates did and that ac­tion should be taken against them?
11. Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Panel re­port states that the ad­min­is­tra­tion –you and your sub­or­di­nates, made no ef­fort to stop the Sikh San­gat as­sem­bly at Sher­pur bridge on the out­skirts of Nako­dar City, the said as­sem­bly was never de­clared un­law­ful, no ef­forts were made to dis­perse the as­sem­bled San­gat and the SP (Op­er­a­tion) claimed he reg­u­larly gave the in­for­ma­tion to ADC and SSP about the as­sem­bly and speeches be­ing made but no in­struc­tions were is­sued to him. Why did your ad­min­is­tra­tion not act?
12. Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Panel re­port, like the Jus­tice Ran­jit Singh Com­mis­sion Re­port and the Jus­tice Zora Singh Com­mis­sion re­ports into the sac­ri­lege in­ci­dents in Kotka­pura, Bara­gari and other places cat­e­gor­i­cally states that “if the ad­min­is­tra­tion has acted in a timely man­ner it was pos­si­ble to find the cul­prits of des­e­cra­tion of SGGS, the po­lice fir­ing could have been avoided.” Specif­i­cally, the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Re­port says, “Cases re­gard­ing all four in­ci­dents, i.e., the burn­ing of the holy ‘Birs’ in the Gur­d­wara, the tak­ing out of pro­ces­sion by the ac­tivists of the AISSF and the dam­age done by the mem­ber of the pro­ces­sion, the pro­ces­sion taken out by the Shiv Sena peo­ple and dam­age done by them and that of fir­ing at Sher­pur bridge, were reg­is­tered , but in no case any re­spon­si­ble po­lice of­fi­cer started in­ves­ti­ga­tion. If in­ves­ti­ga­tion would have been started prop­erly in first three cases and peo­ple in­volved were rounded up, the sit­u­a­tion may have been con­trolled es­pe­cially when Sec­tion 144. Cr. P.C. was al­ready im­posed and later cur­few was im­posed.”  Do you read this as a clean chit to you and the po­lice?
13. You have been re­peat­ing again and again to the me­dia that they should read the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Re­port. Please go through this para­graph of the re­port, which nails all the lies of the then po­lice and the ad­min­is­tra­tion:

“The cir­cum­stances show that the mob had not be­come vi­o­lent. The ob­ject of the peo­ple com­pris­ing the mob was to go to the Gur­d­wara as they con­sid­ered the burn­ing of the holy ‘Birs’ as an act of sac­ri­lege. It is not proved be­yond doubt that the mem­bers of the mob were armed with fire arms or deadly weapons. Even if some peo­ple in the mob car­ried lathis and kir­pans, they could not be of any dan­ger to the se­cu­rity forces who were fully equipped with the fire arms and other weapons and were at a con­sid­er­able dis­tance. When the mob was adamant to pro­ceed fur­ther in the Nako­dar town for go­ing to the Gur­d­wara, Mr. Sharma should have called the S.S.P. and the D.M. at the spot and some ne­go­ti­a­tions should have been taken with the mob. If the sit­u­a­tion could be rightly han­dled, there would have been no ne­ces­sity of re­sort­ing to fir­ing. Mr. A. K. Sharma, S.P. (Op­er­a­tions) says that he had or­dered fir­ing by plas­tic bul­lets, but the doc­tors who ex­am­ined in­jured per­sons from the pub­lic, have not stated that any one of them had plas­tic bul­let in­juries. If the peo­ple in the mob had been told that the fir­ing would be re­sorted, pos­si­bly the mob might have dis­persed. The fir­ing in the air could have also served the pur­pose. All these cir­cum­stances show that the sit­u­a­tion was not prop­erly han­dled by Mr. A. K. Sharma and he even did not get the help of the S.S.P. and the D.M. who were avail­able. All the four dead per­sons were shot at their vi­tal parts of the body two of the in­jured per­sons also had fire arm in­juries on the up­per por­tion of their bod­ies which shows that the fir­ing was not done ac­cord­ing to the Po­lice Rules. The mob was not armed with such weapons with which they could cause any dan­ger to the se­cu­rity forces. They were still at a dis­tance of 16 to 20 yards from the se­cu­rity forces and there was no dan­ger to the lives of the se­cu­rity men, nor to any pub­lic man.  It has come in the ev­i­dence pro­duced by the Gur­d­wara Man­ag­ing Com­mit­tee that about 300 shots were fired. The or­der that ef­fec­tive fir­ing should be on the lower part of the body was to­tally ig­nored and it ap­pears that the four per­sons who died were aimed at the vi­tal parts of their bod­ies so as to kill them.” 

14.  The re­port of the Pun­jab Hu­man Rights Or­gan­i­sa­tion -‘A Mis­chief at Nako­dar’ , quotes me­dia re­ports and eye wit­nesses to state that one of the vic­tims Har­min­der Singh Chalu­per ran for safety, but was chased by the po­lice, de­tained and shot in po­lice cus­tody at point blank range with his ser­vice re­volver by SHO Jaski­rat Cha­hal and then SP(D) Swaran Singh ‘Ghot­na’.  His post mortem re­port also in­di­cates the same. Can you throw some light on this?  What ac­tion did the po­lice higher ups and the ad­min­is­tra­tion take against SHO Cha­hal or SP(D) Swaran Singh ‘Ghot­na’?

15. You as the of­fi­ci­at­ing Deputy Com­mis­sioner and Izhar Alam as SSP Ja­land­har were ex­am­ined by the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion as pros­e­cu­tion wit­nesses. How can you for­get any­thing re­lat­ing to the Nako­dar po­lice fir­ing?

The elec­torate of Fate­hgarh Sahib and Ja­land­har and the jus­tice seek­ing peo­ple of Pun­jab must ask these ques­tions over and over again. These ques­tions are a tell-tale story of acts of omis­sion and com­mis­sion –Don’t do what you are sup­posed to do and do what you are not sup­posed to do.

Cha­ran­jit Singh At­wal, though not di­rectly in­volved in the Nako­dar po­lice fir­ing, has to clar­ify his role as the speaker when the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Re­port was tabled in the Pun­jab As­sem­bly on 5 March 2001. 

1. Can you come clean and con­firm that the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Re­port was tabled in the Pun­jab As­sem­bly when you were the speaker on 5 March 2001 or was it qui­etly en­tered into the records?
2. Be­fore plac­ing it or qui­etly en­ter­ing in the records, did the Speak­er’s of­fice ob­tain any ex­pla­na­tion what­so­ever as to why a 1986 re­port was now be­ing tabled in 2001?
3. As­sum­ing that it was tabled, why was there no dis­cus­sion on the re­port by any mem­ber on that day or on the fol­low­ing days?
4. In the in­ter­est of jus­tice, can you please tell the vic­tim fam­i­lies as to where is Part II of the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Re­port?
5. Can you please in­form the peo­ple of Pun­jab, as to how of­ten do re­ports of Com­mis­sions get tabled in As­sem­blies with­out Ac­tion Taken Re­ports? Can you re­call any such re­port?

Lies, sub­terfuge and am­ne­sia has put the Badal Dal in the dock. Notwith­stand­ing their bravado, Parkash Singh Badal and Sukhbir Singh Badal have a lot of ex­pla­na­tion to do.

The elec­torate of Fate­hgarh Sahib and Ja­land­har and the jus­tice seek­ing peo­ple of Pun­jab must ask these ques­tions over and over again. These ques­tions are a tell-tale story of acts of omis­sion and com­mis­sion –Don’t do what you are sup­posed to do and do what you are not sup­posed to do.

Will the elec­torate of Fate­hgarh Sahib and Ja­land­har rise to the oc­ca­sion? Will the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion Re­port into the Nako­dar killing be­come an al­ba­tross across the neck of Dar­bara Singh Guru, Cha­ran­jit Singh At­wal and the Badal Dal lead­er­ship?