Bokaro Carnage: Sikhs attacked in Bokaro Steel City

Who: Sikh families of Bokaro Steel City and the nearby town of Chas, then in Bihar and now in Jharkhand, and the mobs that attacked them. The Misra Commission, whose chapter on Bokaro and Chas is the main published record, said most of the attackers came from outside the localities they struck, and that some people with Congress-I party affiliation took part. Police and the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) were used to bring the violence under control.

What: News of Indira Gandhi's death reached Bokaro on the evening of October 31, 1984. Condolence meetings that evening carried anti-Sikh slogans and threats. Nothing serious happened until about 8 am on November 1. After a curfew was imposed that morning, mobs began attacking Sikh homes and shops. Most mobs were 40 to 50 strong, but some reached about 2,000. The Commission said the attacks came almost as a challenge to the curfew.

The worst-hit place was Dashmesh Nagar, a remote Sikh colony with no regular road link to the city. Its gurdwara and homes were razed, and the Commission found that every Sikh found there was killed. Twelve people died there before police help arrived. Co-operative Colony, Sector IX, Sector 8-B and Gammon Colony were also attacked, and in Chas Sikh-owned shops were looted and burned. The Army was not called in. The Commission said the violence was contained by the evening of November 1, and judged the police "not as ineffective as at Kanpur or Delhi". It counted 69 Sikhs dead, plus three men from the mobs shot dead by police.

Where: Bokaro Steel City and Chas, in what is now Jharkhand, including the Dashmesh Nagar colony.

Why it mattered: Bokaro shows that the November 1984 violence against Sikhs was not confined to Delhi, and that the count of the dead is still disputed. The Misra Commission recorded 69 Sikhs killed. In March 2015 the All India Sikh Students Federation (AISSF) said 90 Sikhs had been killed in Bokaro city alone, said police and government records did not match, and asked Jharkhand's chief minister for a judicial commission.

Compensation came slowly. Bihar first paid Rs 10,000 to the next of kin of each Sikh killed, then raised it to Rs 20,000, and gave jobs to many widows. Nearly four decades later, on November 22, 2023, the Jharkhand cabinet approved Rs 1.20 crore for 24 victims and dependents in Bokaro district, on the recommendation of the state's "Anti-Sikh Riot Commission".