‘We didn’t kill her, she was our leader too’

Life has not been kind to 74-year-old Jaswinder Kaur. She lost her father when she was 12 during the Partition. Thirty-seven years later, soon after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, a mob hacked to death and burned six male members of her family in Delhi.

The place where Kaur lives is a reminder of the dark days of 1984. West Delhi’s cloistered Tilak Vihar colony has over 300 widows, who lost husbands and sons in the anti-Sikh riots following the assassination.

“Why were my family members attacked and killed by the mob? Did we kill Indira Gandhi? Wasn’t she our leader too?” asks Kaur, agitatedly, sitting on a charpoi outside her house. “She belonged to the same party that had helped us during the Partition. How could the same people kill my children? Why has the government not punished even a single person for rioting, murder and loot so far?”

Tears running down her furrowed cheeks, Kaur recalls making her grandson appear as a girl, parting his hair into plaits to protect him from the mob that attacked her shanty at Trilokpuri in east Delhi.

A few metres from Kaur’s one-room house is a gurdwara where Bishen Singh, 63, is busy with construction work. “I used to live in Haryana. During the riots, I lost my wife and two children and since then, I have never gone back. I was also attacked by the mob but survived,” he says, burn scars visible all over his body. “I tried to settle in my village in Punjab, but didn’t feel like living there. So I came here. I now work and live in the gurdwara.”

Tragic riot tales are common to almost all families in the colony, though the residents try hard to forget.

“I was only 14 when my father was killed,” recalls Maan Singh, sipping tea outside his small house. “My mother and I survived but I had to stop going to school. We used to have an auto spares shop, which was burnt down. I began working as a mechanic to sustain my family and now I drive an auto-rickshaw.

“My children go to school. I don’t want them to become like me. I hope God is kind to them!”

Maan Singh’s neighbour Jai Singh too survived, but at a high cost. He was attacked by a mob armed with iron rods, and has since been confined to a wheelchair. “If the government wants to punish the real criminals, we are ready to identify them. But I think people in this colony have lost faith so they don’t come out to speak against anyone. They know that nothing will happen,” he says bitterly.

The most unfortunate story is perhaps of Manjit Singh. He was just five months old when an armed mob killed his father. Manjit did not study beyond class VII and became a drug addict. His mother works as a domestic help in neighbouring Tilak Nagar. “I have tried committing suicide. I want to help my mother but can’t. Worse, I am a drug addict,” he says, displaying blade marks around his neck, the reminder of his suicide attempt and the stamp of a life of despair.