Sanjay Suri

Sanjay Suri was a young crime reporter for The Indian Express in Delhi in 1984 and, in the words of the author note on the book's listing at Pagdandi, one of the few journalists to witness the anti-Sikh violence after Indira Gandhi's assassination. He later filed affidavits with eyewitness accounts and gave evidence to several commissions of inquiry; a reviewer in the Journal of Punjab Studies notes his affidavits to the Misra and Nanavati commissions. Later he worked from London, as an editor with Inter Press Service and as Europe editor of CNN-IBN, and he holds a Delhi University master's in English literature and an LSE master's in social psychology (Bridge India).

His book 1984: The Anti-Sikh Violence and After (HarperCollins India, 2015, 272 pages) draws on his own reporting, interviews with senior police officers and the existing records. According to reports on the book:

• Maxwell Pereira, an additional deputy commissioner, ordered firing outside the Sisganj gurdwara on 1 November. One man was killed, but the firing protected the gurdwara, and Pereira says the control room gave no reply when he reported it.
• Amod Kanth, deputy commissioner of the central district, ordered firm action and was later censured at police headquarters, where he was told it was premature.
• Assistant commissioner Keval Singh asked permission to open fire at 8:32 pm on 31 October. It never came, and he was taken off duty at 9:22 pm.
• Ved Marwah, later police commissioner, led an inquiry into police failures that, the book says, Rajiv Gandhi ended before it could implicate top officers.

Suri argues that signals from the top discouraged police action, that Rajiv Gandhi showed "passive aggression" towards acting against the killers, that Doordarshan could still face prosecution for broadcasting calls for murder, and that the killings of about 3,000 Sikhs were organised by senior Congress leaders (India TV and Gulf News reports of the book).

The book also records that soon after Operation Blue Star he visited Bhindranwale's village of Rode, where, as the only Hindu in the village, he was offered rest, care and a meal. Suri did not file it as a story at the time (Journal of Punjab Studies review). Open's reviewer says the book argues that Punjab saw little retaliation against Hindus because the victims in Delhi were not Jat Sikhs, which that reviewer finds surprising.

Reviews are mixed. A reviewer in Open magazine calls the police interviews the book's most valuable part, but finds his argument on why Punjab saw little retaliation surprising and says he contradicts himself on whether the Congress leadership directed the violence. The Journal of Punjab Studies reviewer says the interviews with officers substantiate Suri's arguments.