Citizens' Commission 1984

The Citizens' Commission was a non-official inquiry into the killing of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere after Indira Gandhi's assassination on 31 October 1984. On 16 November 1984 a group of prominent citizens, among them Air Chief Marshal Arjan Singh (retd) and the senior advocate Soli Sorabjee, asked the government to set up a tribunal of three non-political, non-official persons to inquire into the events of 31 October to 4 November, including the allegations that the mobs had been deliberately incited and led. Their statement added that a Citizens' Commission of five eminent persons had been set up.

Members: Justice S. M. Sikri, a former Chief Justice of India, who chaired it; Badr-ud-Din Tyabji, former Commonwealth Secretary and Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University; Rajeshwar Dayal, former Foreign Secretary; Govind Narain, former Governor of Karnataka and Home and Defence Secretary; and T. C. A. Srinivasvaradan, former Home Secretary.

Its work: The Commission began on 26 November 1984, working from the Vishwa Yuvak Kendra in Delhi. It invited victims and witnesses through the newspapers, visited relief camps, gurdwaras and badly hit localities, examined many victims and eyewitnesses without publishing their names, to protect them from reprisal, and read affidavits. It asked the Prime Minister and the Home Minister for interviews and says that, without them, lack of access to official sources handicapped its work.

What its report, signed on 18 January 1985, said

• The uniform pattern of the crimes strongly suggested that at some stage the objective became to "Teach the Sikhs a lesson"; witnesses said Sikh houses had been marked in advance.
• It found an "incredible and abysmal failure" of the administration and police. The interval between the attack on Indira Gandhi and the announcement of her death should have given warning; police were absent from the roads, many were said to be indifferent or to have encouraged the mobs, and people arrested were reportedly freed on bail as low as Rs 250.
• Many witnesses named leaders of the ruling party as having instigated the violence, supplied kerosene and pointed out Sikh houses. Its conclusions name none of them.
• It recommended a statutory commission of inquiry of eminent non-official persons, special investigation teams and special courts, prosecution of any police officers who committed crimes, full compensation, and reorganisation of the Delhi Police.

What followed: The government later appointed the Ranganath Misra Commission, which reported in August 1986. Before the Nanavati Commission, Govind Narain produced the Citizens' Commission report as an exhibit. As the Nanavati report summarises his evidence, there was a lot of evidence before the Citizens' Commission that the Congress leader H. K. L. Bhagat had planned an organised massacre of Sikhs in the trans-Yamuna area and that Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler had instigated mobs. The Nanavati Commission called the Citizens' Commission's inquiry one made by eminent persons of unquestionable integrity, and cited what affected persons told it in support of its findings of credible material against Tytler and Sajjan Kumar.