Giani Sahib Singh, Head Granthi

Giani Sahib Singh was Head Granthi of Sri Harmandir Sahib (Harmandar Sahib), the Golden Temple, in June 1984. He gave an eyewitness account of the Army attack on the shrine, printed in Gurmit Singh's History of Sikh Struggles. He is not the scholar Professor Sahib Singh.

His account, as Gurmit Singh printed it in volume III (pp. 6 to 7 and 9; the part on p. 9 is from an interview with Surya magazine)

• About 6,000 to 7,000 people were trapped inside the complex by the curfew.
• Security forces had been firing since 1 June, and the Army opened fire at about 4.45 on the morning of 4 June.
• About 350 bullet marks were left on Harmandar Sahib, and the Akal Takht was completely smashed.
• On 7 June about 1,000 to 1,200 dead bodies lay in the parkarma, and until 20 June it was not possible to enter without covering the nose because of the smell.
• All the rumalas, the cloths that cover the Guru Granth Sahib, had been burnt. When President Giani Zail Singh visited and was told, he arranged replacements by the next flight.

He was also one of five officials of the shrine whom, Gurmit Singh's book says, the Army forced at gunpoint to sign a statement about the Toshakhana. Giani Kirpal Singh, Giani Puran Singh, Bhan Singh and Rajinder Singh signed with him (p. 9).

In an interview with Harbir Singh Bhanwar, a Tribune journalist, for Bhanwar's Punjabi book on Operation Blue Star, he said that he lived behind the shrine, that the Army began its attack around 4.45 a.m. on 4 June and kept up blind firing until the afternoon of 5 June, and that on 7 June Army officials took him into the complex (Chaman Lal's review in Frontier, October 2021).

What he is remembered for: his testimony is one of the accounts from inside the shrine's own staff of the damage to Sri Harmandir Sahib and of the dead left in the parkarma. The figure of 1,000 to 1,200 bodies in the parkarma is his own estimate.