I.K. Gujral

Inder Kumar Gujral was born at Jhelum in undivided Punjab on 4 December 1919 and died at a Gurgaon hospital on 30 November 2012, aged 92 (The Tribune). He was Prime Minister of India in a Congress-supported coalition from April 1997 to 1998, earlier External Affairs Minister and ambassador to the Soviet Union, and, the Tribune notes, close to Indira Gandhi. In 1998 he won the Jalandhar seat as an independent with Akali Dal support. He appears in this history as a witness (W-142) who told the Nanavati Commission what he saw in Delhi on 31 October and 1 November 1984.

What he told the commission (Nanavati report, pp. 133 to 134)

• After a call from Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora he went to the house of the writer Patwant Singh, and they all met President Giani Zail Singh, returning “disappointed by his response”.
• They then went to Home Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. On the way he saw buildings burning with “no attempt on the part of Police” to catch the people or put out the fire. He found that Rao did not know many details and had spent much of his time receiving foreign dignitaries for Indira Gandhi's funeral, and Rao told them he was taking steps to call the Army.
• On the morning of 1 November he told Lieutenant Governor P. G. Gavai to call the Army; Gavai replied that if it was called, “there would be panic”.
• In the relief camps, from what he saw and heard, the violence appeared to him to have been organised. Jagmohan Singh Kochar told him that four members of the mob that attacked his house belonged to the Congress Party.

What the commission made of it: Rao told the commission that he denied telling Gujral and Patwant Singh that he had to spend much time receiving foreign dignitaries (p. 177). The commission found “no delay or indifference at the level of the Home Minister”, and held the Lieutenant Governor and the Commissioner of Police responsible for the failure of law and order (p. 178).

What he is remembered for: as one of the senior public men who went to the President and the Home Minister on 1 November 1984 and later put on record what he saw. The commission held the police, the Lieutenant Governor and the Commissioner of Police to blame, but not the Home Minister.