Jethmalani lawyers' report on Delhi, November 1984

Who: A group of 35 lawyers who met in the Supreme Court Library in Delhi on Friday 2 November 1984, among them V.M. Tarkunde, Soli Sorabjee, F. Nariman, Kapil Sibal and Ram and Rani Jethmalani. Gurmit Singh's History of Sikh Struggles reprints their report, from Surya India (1985) under the title "Politics of Criminalisation", as the Jethmalani report.

What: The lawyers went together in eight cars to see for themselves. At Pandav Nagar about 50 to 60 Sikh men and women sheltered in a gurdwara; they thanked a lone police officer, Vinod Sharma, who had taken their kirpans into the station's custody, and the report says this reassured the Hindu residents and prevented violence. At Vinod Nagar East the lawyers saw charred bodies in the lane and met the only surviving Sikh man, saved because his wife threw herself over him. Five women there said the mob had cut their hair, jeered "Mona" and made them dance while it threw kerosene; all said the mobs were led by politicians of the ruling party. A doctor at a government hospital refused to treat them, citing a circular of 9 May 1984 on the zonal division of "medico-legal" work.

On 3 November, the report says, a local Congress (I) office-bearer turned the Hindu residents of Pandav Nagar against the lawyers within half an hour; Rani Jethmalani's car was stoned, an Army jeep took the group out, and the visit to Trilokpuri was abandoned. That evening a delegation told the Home Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, that the police had offered no protection and were "willing accomplices". The report says he at once ordered Army trucks to the tense areas. It ends: "An impartial enquiry into the atrocities of the last few days is imperative."

Where: Shakarpur, Pandav Nagar, Vinod Nagar and Ganesh Nagar in Delhi, and the Ludlow Castle and Shahdara relief camps.

Why it mattered: It is an eyewitness account by senior lawyers of the first week, recording victims' statements that politicians of the ruling party led the mobs and the lawyers' own words to the Home Minister about the police. These are allegations; what the courts and commissions later found is on the pages linked below. The same volume prints a petition to the Supreme Court by three Delhi University lecturers, Madhu Kishwar, Ruth Vanita and Rakesh Bharadwaj, asking for an independent inquiry, the suspension of those it said were leading a cover-up, and compensation on the lines of war pensions. The first official inquiry, by the Delhi Police's Ved Marwah, was set up on 25 November 1984.