It was a sight I will never forget in my life. Two alleyways in Trilokpuri, Block-32, littered with bodies, body parts, hair and blood.

It was around 7 p.m. Nov 1, 1984, and there was no light. The only illumination was from the headlights of my car. Nobody was alive and there was absolutely no sound. It was like a bizarre science fiction movie.

It was impossible for us – Joseph Maliakan and myself of the Indian Express and Alok Tomar of Jansatta – to keep our feet on the ground without stepping on something. We literally had to tiptoe through this massacre, through this carnage in east Delhi.

When we walked down the narrow 100-metre-long street, we found a young woman, a polio victim, sitting at the entrance of her house. She was just sitting there silently and all around her, in front of her, behind her, beside her on either side, there were piles of bodies.

Her entire family was butchered but she was completely emotionless. She had no tears, she had no hysteria, she was just silent.

We then heard a sound of an infant who must have been a few weeks old. We handed him to the police.

We also saw a young Sikh, who had been stabbed the previous day, lying underneath a body. He had managed to tie his turban around his stomach, but by then had bled for at least 24 hours. We shifted him to the police van standing nearby. He later died.

We were there for about one or two hours and it was horrendous. It was just like some place where you slaughter animals except in this case they slaughtered the Sikhs – 320 of them in these two very very narrow lanes.

There was hair lying all over the place, there was blood, there were fingers, arms, legs and heads.

These alleyways were populated by poor Scheduled Caste Sikh families whose basic trade was to weave beds and chairs.

Earlier in the day, when we tried to come here, we were chased away by the crowd which threatened to kill us. I got information about the killings from a young man, Mohan Singh, who had come to my office looking completely shattered.

We didn’t really believe him because his account was so fanciful and bizarre. But a few hours later, we were to realise that even his words were not enough to describe the horror, the cruelty and the carnage that had gone on there.

Later it transpired that the butchery had taken place casually over two days because people used to come, kill and go back to their homes. They used to have their food, take rest, come back and start killing again.

It was very very cold, very cynical and calculated in one way and in another way it was completely barbaric and brutal.

We went back completely dazed and shocked. I have never seen anything like that in my life in a civilised city which is the capital of India.

There were just two police officers there. They had no explanation and were completely silent.

When I went back to Trilokpuri the next day, Nov 2, they had cleaned up the bodies, killing the evidence. There was no police there and there were just a few Sikh families that were given shelter by locals, who were fearful of their own lives.

For three days this carnage raged unchecked. Besides east Delhi, there were similar scenes in west Delhi, Chandni Chowk in the old quarter and in central Delhi. If police had been marginally vigilant and opened fire, the crowds would have dispersed. I don’t think there were any instances of anyone opening fire.

The fact is that the state was complicit for the first time in independent India’s history in participating in a very calculated ethnic cleansing programme.

Those three-four days, I think are one of the biggest blots on the Indian establishment.

(Rahul Bedi was one of the first journalists to reach Trilokpuri after the riots broke out. He spoke to Mayank Aggarwal.)

 A personal experience:

Hi Shekhar,

I was in West Delhi at that time and was around 6years old. Although I was very young at that time, I can almost clearly remember everything that happened.

I was suffering from chicken pox and my little brother was only 4 years old. My dad had an accident earlier and had a plastered leg. My mom was the only person who was taking care of my dad in bed, myself and my little brother. My little brother wore patka and we also had a ‘Khanda’ outside our house. My mom didn’t know what to do and just hung a sheet outside to cover it. She could hear the crowd going to each street one by one and doing the killings and loots. She could see our local Gurdwara on fire from the roof. Since my dad was always in the front room…she moved him to the back of the house along with us, without thinking that once they are in the house, we can easily be found at the back too.

I remember vaguely seeing her rushing up on the roof to see what was going on and to come and try to take care of us. The loud noises could be hear and she could see smoke and fire around us in different streets.

It was lucky for us that once the mob got to our street they decided to go to the other streets first which had more Sikh houses and leave our street for last, as we only had a couple of houses where Sikhs lived. As they went further up, there was a family where one of their relative, who was visiting from US, had a pistol. And as he fired in the air the mob ran away. Due to that one person, my family was left unharmed. I do not know who that was, but wherever he is, I would like to take this opportunity to thank him from the bottom of my heart.

Lot of lives changed after that incident! I went back to school and found my friends crying all the time as there families were killed, and the horror stories I heard and the people I saw, when I visited my doctor, will stay with me forever!

Just thought I would share my experience on this day!

My prayers are with all those families that suffered losses during the riots in 1984.

P.S. I would also like to add that one thing I noticed after the riots was that all the Sikhs who suffered during the riots, lost there business there families, have come out to be even more successful and have been flourishing even more. Which shows that history repeats once again…every time an attack has been made on Sikhs they have come out of it even more stronger and flourishing!

Rimple