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(Statement of Devinder Singh Duggal cont'd)

The curfew was extended for another 36 hours and, in fact, remained in force until the 10th.

It was cruelly and rigidly enforced by the army who had now replaced the police and paramilitary. Two young Sikh boys were shot dead outside our home …. I would like to say with all possible emphasis, that at no time were pilgrims trapped in the Temple given any warning, until the 5th, of the proposed army action.Every man,women and child pilgrim inside the Temple were treated as ‘the enemy to be shot and killed if possible or if wounded, to be denied first aid or water ’. Even the warning on the 5th was couched in war terms -‘surrender at the police station or be shot ’. Very few surrendered, preferring death from a soldier ’s bullet to death from torture at the hands of the police. Our house and every other house in the neighbourhood was searched and ransacked several times over the next few days. Anything of any value was taken. We were lucky in that my wife was not stripped or molested as happened to several other women in the street. The excuse used by soldiers in making women remove their upper garments was that they were looking for tell-tale marks of bruising from rifle butts among terrorist suspects.

On Monday 4th June, at about 4:40 am, occasional shooting gave way to heavy gunfire that increased in intensity over the next three days.Through our now shattered windows we could see heavy guns being used. We also saw tanks and armoured cars. The stench of death was so powerful as to be truly unbearable. By the afternoon of the 6th,the Harminder Sahib seemed to be almost entirely in the hands of the army and this was confirmed by radio broadcasts.What now followed were periods of eerie silence punctuated by shellfire from guns and tanks as the army demolished structures sacred to every Sikh.There was also some occasional rifle fire, presumably from Sikh snipers. The army pounding of the Harminder Sahib area continued over the next few days confirming our fears of deliberate and vindictive destruction.

On the night of the 5th,one of the houses backing onto the Temple precinct and owned by a Hindu, caught fire.The father sent his two teenage sons to the nearby square to get water.They arrived there to find that the army had rounded up some 14 Sikhs youngsters and were about to shoot them with Sten gun fire. They, too, were bundled along side the Sikhs and only when they pleaded that they were Hindu and had come to get water to put out a fire on their home,were they spared.The soldiers then shot the Sikhs in front of their eyes.

Also on the night of the 5th, the aged and chronically ill father of the couple next door finally expired and on the morning of the 6th the army gave our neighbours special permission to take him to the crematorium. Even before reaching this site,they could smell the stench of putrid and burning flesh. On entering the crematorium grounds they saw a sight that literally made them sick with horror. Grotesque piles of dozens of bodies were being burnt in the open without dignity or religious rites like so many carcases. The bodies had all been brought there by dust carts and from the number of carts; the attendant estimated some 3,300 had so far been cremated.

On the night of the 7th, an elderly Sikh soldier banged on the door demanding water. We showed him the water in the bath, now covered with a layer of dust from the soot and flames all round. He said he would get some from the hand pump in the square. As he turned to leave, my wife asked him why was the firing was still continuing when the radio had announced the capture of the Harminder Sahib a day earlier. Near to tears,the old soldier replied that the army was bringing in the young Sikhs from surrounding areas and shooting them in rows near the Harminder Sahib.

The curfew was lifted intermittently,a few hours at a time after the 10th,and over the next few days we continued to learn with horror of the barbarism,savagery and mindless destruction by the army.We were visited by a priest I knew well and whose face was black and blue with bruises.He said he had been beaten mercilessly by the army who eventually let him go when he was recognised by friends at the police station.He narrated how,on his way to the station,he was taken past a square where young Sikhs were being lined up and killed with Sten guns and grenades.

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