Gurgaon Massacre

Who: Sikh families of Gurgaon, now Gurugram, Haryana. According to the Garg Commission, many of the victims were families who had been uprooted from Pakistan in 1947. The reports on its findings call the attackers criminals engaged in killing, looting and arson, and do not name them.

What: On 2 November 1984, after Indira Gandhi's assassination, mobs attacked Sikhs across Gurgaon. Official records count 47 Sikhs killed in Gurgaon, and 17 in nearby Pataudi. Victims recall that 300 houses were gutted in Gurgaon alone. Gurdial Singh, Sewa Singh, Harveer Kaur and Kuldeep Singh told the Garg Commission at Hisar on 30 April 2015 how mobs burned their houses and shops. A victims' committee official later estimated that around 10,000 Sikh families in Gurgaon were directly or indirectly affected.

Where: Gurgaon (Gurugram), Haryana.

Why it mattered: The Nanavati Commission had not examined the Gurgaon and Pataudi cases. After the discovery of Hondh Chillar, Haryana set up Justice T.P. Garg's one-man commission on 5 March 2011, and on 12 July 2012, on the High Court's direction, extended it to Gurgaon and Pataudi. Over 109 sittings it examined 150 claims from Gurgaon and 43 from Pataudi, heard 384 witnesses and took 367 documents. It recommended compensation for 36 deaths, 24 in Gurgaon and 12 in Pataudi, which is fewer than the official count of 47 and 17.

Its 300-page report, submitted on 29 April 2016, blamed the tragedy partly on an "all-round failure of public authorities" and recommended Rs 12.07 crore: Rs 5.75 crore for deaths, Rs 4.8 crore for 96 cases of residential property loss, Rs 1.21 crore for 84 cases of commercial loss, Rs 26 lakh for two injuries and Rs 5 lakh for two gurdwaras. Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar approved the sum in 2016, 32 years after the killings. Victims had complained in June 2016 that the report was neither implemented nor made public. In 2019 Punjab's Leader of Opposition said that action against the killers was still awaited.