Six Hindu bus passengers shot dead at Dhilwan; President's Rule follows

Who: Armed men whom no source names, six Hindu bus passengers who were killed, and the Government of India, which put Punjab under President's Rule the next day. No group claimed the killings.

What: The White Paper's calendar says a private bus left Amritsar for Delhi at about 10 pm on 5 October 1983. At Dhilwan it was hijacked and taken towards Nurpur Labana, the passengers were separated on communal lines, six Hindu passengers were shot dead and another Hindu was seriously hurt. The White Paper places Dhilwan in Kapurthala district. Khushwant Singh and J. S. Grewal give the same six dead; Khushwant Singh has the bus going from Amritsar to Delhi and Grewal has it Delhi-bound, near Dhilwan on the Beas, on 5 or 6 October, while Gurmit Singh has it going from Delhi to Amritsar. Wikipedia, citing media reports of the time, says the attackers asked the passengers their religion, and that a survivor pretended to be dead.

The Government of India put Punjab under President's Rule on 6 October, the day after the killings. Khushwant Singh and Gurmit Singh say Darbara Singh's Congress ministry was dismissed; the White Paper says the Chief Minister resigned. Grewal writes that the decision was taken to remove Darbara Singh at once, and that Darbara Singh blamed his opponents within the Congress for his fall. Punjab was declared a disturbed area on 7 October, and the Armed Forces (Punjab and Chandigarh) Special Powers Ordinance followed on 15 October. In August 1984 the Constitution was amended to extend President's Rule by a year.

Khushwant Singh records that Longowal and some Akali leaders expressed regret. A request that Longowal persuade the high priests of the takhts to declare the killers tankhaiya was stalled by Gurcharan Singh Tohra, who felt that blanket excommunication would condemn the whole community, and Longowal only expressed sorrow. Wikipedia says Akali leaders alleged that professionals acting for an intelligence body they called the Third Agency carried out the killings, to create a pretext for President's Rule; it also says the killings remain unsolved.

Where: Dhilwan, on the Beas in Kapurthala district, and the road towards Nurpur Labana.

Why it mattered: Gurmit Singh and Khushwant Singh both treat it as the incident that brought the fall of Darbara Singh and direct rule from Delhi. Grewal counts about 140 violent incidents in 1983, 36 of them in October, and writes of Hindu passengers being taken out of buses in this period. Gurmit Singh says Hindu mobs at Yamunanagar in Haryana burned Sikh shops and houses in retaliation for the killing of six Hindus in Punjab.