nineteen eighty four
THE ATTACK ON THE HARMINDER SAHIB

“The soldiers removed their turbans, pulled their hair over
their eyes and tied the long hair around their necks....”
 

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Associated press reports in The Times revealed that an Amritsar deputy police superintendent who helped to remove the body of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale and 200 other Sikhs from the Harminder Sahib had stated that at least 13 Sikhs had been tied up and shot.

Another police official told reporters that a lorry load of elderly Sikhs who surrendered on the first day of the military operation were brought to the main city police station and tortured there by the army.

“The soldiers removed their turbans,pulled their hair over their eyes and tied the long hair around their necks.Then they threw sand into their faces …The old man shrieked,but I helplessly watched all this from my office window.”(The Guardian and Times of 14/6/84)

Another eyewitness described how a group of about 50 Sikh males aged 8 years upwards were taken from a Sikh Temple near the Harminder Sahib and then killed with grenades.
Yet another eyewitness told of men,women and children being taken from a house used by a sniper and were shot in the street.

The following are extracts from the statements tape recorded and transcribed by Manjit Singh Khaira, advocate of Punjab and Haryana High Court and also a member of national executive of People ’s Union for Civil Liberties.

Statement of Balwant Singh Ramuwalia,an ex Indian MP:
“……It was about 4.25 or 4.35 a.m.on the morning of the 6th.Then the firing stopped and after a while we got up. Slowly, we went into the nearby room and found women sitting down there. A little distance ahead, there was another man seated, five or seven of us got into the room, and then the military went up into Guru Ram Das Sarai. In several rooms, they broke the glass panes and threw bombs inside. We heard the sound of the bursting grenades, After a little while they brought some persons downstairs. There is an underground basement in Guru Ram Das Serai and they brought 40 men out of it.

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