The Kaurs of 1984: How Sikh Women Continue to Fight '40 Years of Injustice'

The unheard stories of struggles of women survivors in the aftermath of the 1984 Anti-Sikh Massacre.

(Photo altered by The Quint/Aroop Mishra)

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(Trigger warning: Contains description of violence and sexual assault.)

“‘Kill the Sikhs, they killed our mother!’ We were in our homes when we started hearing these slogans. All of the sudden, a mob entered our home and dragged my brother-in-law outside. They pierced his stomach with a sword, his intestines came out… We started shrieking with horror…”

19-year-old Darshan Kaur’s entire life changed that cold morning of 1 November 1984, when a frenzied mob — armed with iron rods, swords, petrol bombs, and other makeshift weapons — stormed into the quiet lanes of Block 32 in Delhi’s Trilokpuri, enraged and ready to kill innocent people they labelled as “killers of the country’s mother, Indira Gandhi”.

Mrs. Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards at her official residence in Delhi, a day before, on 31 October, in response to ‘Operation Bluestar’ in June, the same year.

Soon after the PM was announced dead at AIIMS, the violence began — starting with then President Giani Zail Singh, whose car was attacked in the compound of AIIMS itself.

Massacre in Trilokpuri

Survivor Darshan Kaur, 60, at the 1984 Martyrs' Remembrance Museum at Gurdwara Shaheed Ganj, Tilak Vihar, Delhi.

(Photo: The Quint)

But till the morning of next day, Darshan didn’t know for sure that Indira Gandhi was dead. And that the assassins belonged to her community.

“There were some rumours… And then the killings started. We couldn’t even understand why they were killing us.” 

Trilokpuri was a Congress bastion. The residents, mostly Sikhs from poor backgrounds, had voted Mrs. Gandhi’s party to power. 

But Darshan’s horrors, or the mob’s thirst for blood, didn’t stop with her 23-year-old brother-in-law, Gian Singh.

Her husband was next.

While Darshan and her family were still trying to save Gian Singh, the mob attacked again.

“We sat my brother-in-law next to a wall, in hope some help might come our way to save him. But right then, a horde of killers entered my house again, in search of more men…”

“My husband was hiding on the terrace. The mob found him. They kicked away the turban from his head. He had long hair… They grabbed my husband by his hair and dragged him out of our house, beating him badly. I was watching from my gate as they threw a wooden cot and a quilt over him. Soon, someone from the mob threw a burning tyre at my husband…”

Darshan Kaur saw his 20-year-old husband, Ram Singh, being burnt alive in front of her eyes.

She begged the mob to spare her husband's life but no one listened.

“An elderly man was passing by. I held his feet, praying to him to save my husband. But he dragged me on the streets…”

Darshan and Ram had three kids together. All Darshan could think about doing next was saving his sons from the mob.

“I tied their hair in two plaits, flipped their shirts with buttons on back and dressed them up as girls, hoping they wouldn’t kill them.”

That “black day”, as she recalls it, Darshan lost 12 members of her family to violence.

'Organised Slaughter'

Darshan said she was shocked how the killers managed to find all Sikh homes.

Even the police were a silent spectator, seemingly aiding the mob, she claimed.

Later on 1 November, Darshan saw something that made her believe that the killings were “organised”.

“I saw a minister arrive in a white Ambassador car. As he came, everybody started running towards him — the police, and even the mob. So we also started running towards him, thinking he’s our minister, he’ll save us.”

“That was HKL Bhagat. I saw him for the first time that day. He was wearing black goggles and white kurta-pyjama. I thought he was there to save us. But instead, he addressed the mob and said - ‘Don't just kill the Sikh men, also kill their kids. Yeh Saanp Ke Bache Hain, Yeh Bhi Humko Marenge (They are all offspring of snakes, they'll also bite us). Whatever you need, chemical, oil, petrol, I’ll provide you’.”

At that time, Congress’ HKL Bhagat was the Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, in Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s cabinet. 

He had won the 1980 general elections from East Delhi constituency securing 2.28 lakh votes (55% vote share).

In the December 1984 Lok Sabha elections, Bhagat was reelected from the same constituency with a vote share of 77%, or 3.86 lakh votes.

He was inducted into the incumbent Rajiv Gandhi cabinet as the Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister.

The following year, Darshan dragged Bhagat to court, despite being threatened, harassed, and even attacked multiple times.

“In 1985, the widows were rehabilitated to Tilak Vihar. The same year, I was summoned for the case against HKL Bhagat. On the hearing dates, some Sikh men would visit my home, asking if I was going to the court. I would tell them yes.”

“A few days later, they offered me a bag of money and asked me not to give my statement in the court. But had I taken the bribe, I would have cheated the martyrs of 1984. Neither I, nor my kids would have been happy today. So I asked them to bring any one of the 12 members of my family back from the dead. And that if they couldn’t, they should just leave…”

But Darshan continued going to court.

In one such hearing, she was asked to identify HKL Bhagat.

“When I reached the court, I saw that they’ve brought 15-20 men — all wearing black goggles and white kurta — and asked me to identify HKL Bhagat. I got confused upon seeing them, and said I couldn't identify him."

“Then all of the sudden, it struck me. It was almost as if the Shaheeds, the martyrs of 1984, guided me towards their killers… I started moving the men aside one by one, and saw Bhagat hiding in between them. The moment I saw Bhagat, I grabbed him, and started beating him. I started looking for my slippers to beat him. I grabbed him, and he sat down. I don't know what happened to me there, I lost control upon seeing him and started shouting — it’s him, he's the killer. The police later escorted me out.”

The trial went on for another decade.

In 1995, the court of Justice SN Dhingra, additional sessions judge at Karkardooma court, convicted Bhagat of inciting the mob in the murders of the husbands of Darshan Kaur and another eyewitness, Satnami Bai.  

But Bhagat got bail within four days of his incarceration.

And shortly after, the second witness from Trilokpuri, Satnami Bai withdrew her statement.

So, HKL Bhagat was later acquitted by the court, citing “lack of evidence”.

Despite Darshan Kaur's decade long legal fight, the court acquitted HKL Bhagat in 1995, citing 'lack of evidence'.

(Photo: The Quint)

“If even a single culprit had been hanged, if even one person had been punished, we would have been at peace, that at least somebody got punished... That at least we got just a little bit of justice,” laments Darshan Kaur.

The Nanavati Commission’s 2005 report did not recommend Bhagat’s prosecution, given his ailing health and acquittal in previous cases.

HKL Bhagat died in 2005 of prolonged illness. 

“Towards the end, Bhagat suffered a lot. The courts might have failed to punish him, but it was God’s justice,” Darshan says.

'Women Abducted and Raped'

On 1 November, Darshan lost 12 members of her family.

Later that night, the mob abducted what remained of the Sikh families — their women and children — and lined them up in a nearby open ground in Block 32.

“Yeh Bhed Bakrian Hain (These are a flock of sheep),” Darshan recalls someone from the mob as saying.

It was then when the newly widowed and orphaned women’s worst horrors unfolded — rape.

Darshan said the killers started taking a few women with them.

“For years, we remained silent on this, to protect the honour of the women. Rapes happened, but nobody spoke about it as they were ashamed,” Darshan told us.

But Darshan and her mother-in-law managed to escape the ground in the dark of the night along with some other women, including one who was pregnant at that time.

Darshan also had her two elder sons — aged 4 and 2, both dressed up as girls — with her.

But during the violence in the day, her six-month-old son got lost. “My baby was with me when I ran after my husband. But I fell down on the streets, and my baby also fell.”

The women hid in an under-construction site near the park, and spent the night there.

“We would stuff the mouths of our kids with cloth if they cried of hunger. The men were on the hunt for us on the streets, we couldn’t risk being found,” said Darshan, remembering the horrors she lived through.

The next morning, by around 6 AM on 2 November, the streets had fallen silent.

“So we left the building, and headed back to our home. There was a smell of burning....Half-burnt Sikhs were lying dead on the streets, their bodies swelled up. Many homes were also burnt. The Gurdwara near my home was also burnt.”

Considering Trilokpuri as no longer safe, the women decided to escape.

“We walked all the way to Pandav Nagar, begging for food. Our kids hadn’t eaten a bit since the day before. We were hardworking Sikhs, and we had to beg for food… We lost everything that day…”

By noon, the women and the kids reached Patparganj Police Chowki. The policemen there got some food for them.

But they soon asked them to leave the chowki, and head to the Pandav Nagar Gurdwara.

The Gurdwara was under-construction at the time. A group of local Sikhs, with swords in hand, had barricaded the area, preventing the mob from entering.

“We spent the night there. We were given food and shelter. But we couldn’t sleep all night, afraid of the mob. There was a lot of commotion on the streets outside. So we picked up stones and debris and climbed the roof of the Gurdwara. Whenever the mob would come, we would throw stones at them. This went on for the entire night,” Darshan recalled.

But the next morning, the locals asked them to leave the premises and seek shelter in Gurdwara Damdama Sahib.

So on November 3, the women thought of crossing the Yamuna river, and reaching the other side of Delhi.

“When we reached near Yamuna, we saw Gurdwara Damdama Sahib, standing tall across the railway tracks on the other side of the river. So we headed towards that side, thinking we will definitely get shelter there.”

“But as we were trying to cross the railway tracks, we were stopped by the army from going to Gurdwara Damdama Sahib. We pleaded to them that we had no other place to go, and our kids were hungry, so at least let us have langar here. But they didn’t listen to us, and asked us to go to Kalyanpuri instead.”

“So we headed back a little bit. We were thirsty. We had to drink the dirty water of Yamuna.”

It was then that Darshan saw why they weren’t being allowed in the area.

“We saw three trucks arrive near Yamuna. A very foul, burning stench was coming from them. Then we saw what it was — the bodies of dead Sikhs. We watched in horror as the security personnel emptied three truckloads of dead bodies into the Yamuna river. Some women identified their husbands and sons from the mound of bodies, but they weren’t allowed to go near them.”

Traumatised and tired, the women had nothing to do but follow orders. So they headed to Kalyanpuri police station and were later shifted to a relief and rehabilitation centre in Shahdara’s Farsh Bazar.

“There were some foreigners there who gave us food and tents to live in. Here, I was finally reunited with my baby. A woman from Trilokpuri, who came here before us, returned my six-month-old son. I will always be indebted to her for feeding my baby and keeping him alive.’’

The Quint undertook the route which Darshan did, and we found all the places she mentioned in her court statements, and while talking to us.

Forty years on, Block 32 of Trilokpuri is now a ghetto, with very few Sikh families remaining, and Darshan’s home is currently "illegally occupied" by families belonging to another community. 

The Trilokpuri Gurdwara is currently under construction. There is a small museum inside the Gurdwara, dedicated to the martyrs of the 1984 pogrom.

The Patparganj Police Chowki is no longer standing, and the site is now a private property, currently in ruins.

The Pandav Nagar Gurdwara has been renovated into a huge building, standing tall years after it was attacked. The locals still vividly remember what happened here, four decades ago.

The site of the Trilokpuri home of Darshan Kaur, which is currently 'illegally occupied'.

(Photo: The Quint)

Now nearing 60, Darshan resides in a humble home in the constricted streets of Raja Garden, Delhi.

She told us the thought of ever visiting Trilokpuri still gives her the chills, as those streets remind her of the "horrors of the past".  

Her kids are all grown up, and married.

While HKL Bhagat is long dead, Darshan continues to help Advocate HS Phoolka in finding other eyewitnesses in other cases, and convincing the women to give statements in courts.

She is also well-respected among other widows, considering her year-long struggles and hunger strikes after the massacre. She helped many women get government jobs and rehabilitation opportunities.

“It has been 40 long years, but still there’s no justice for us. Whom should we plead to? Which government should we go find? Who will give us justice,” a dismal Darshan Kaur asks.

Pyres in Palam

It wasn’t just East Delhi that was burning that cold November.

Palam, lying on the western periphery of the national capital, was also on fire.

It was here that a 16-year-old Nirpreet Kaur woke up to a doorbell at 2 AM on 1 November.

“It was the Gianiji (priest) of the Gurdwara in front of our home. He requested my mother to prepare some tea, and asked my father to accompany him, as some men had come to visit the Gurdwara,” she said.

Nirpreet’s father, Nirmal Singh, ran a truck and taxi transport business, and was quite well-known in Raj Nagar, Palam Colony. He was also the president of the Gurdwara committee.

“On the evening of 31 October, a local leader, Balwan Khokhar came to my house, and asked my father to keep his brother as a truck driver. My father said he had no vacancies at the moment. He started inquiring about our trucks, and whether we all were safe. We had already heard about violence in parts of Delhi.”

“Balwan Khokhar had come with another person and he told my dad, ‘Sardarji, why are you worried? Sajjan Kumar (Congress MP) is my mama (uncle). Nothing will happen to you, we will take police protection if needed.’ At that time, I got to know that he was Sajjan Kumar’s nephew.”

Nirpreet Kaur, 56, is one of the eyewitness against Sajjan Kumar in the 1984 violence in Delhi's Palam.

(Photo: The Quint)

In the early hours of 1 November, while Nirpreet’s father was getting ready to go to the Gurdwara with the Gianiji, she heard a sudden commotion.

“Slogans were being raised — ‘Indira Gandhi Amar Rahe, In Sardaro Ko Maaro, Inhone Humari Maa Ko Mara Hai’ (Long Live Indira Gandhi, Kill the Sikhs, they’ve killed our mother). I saw from my roof a mob, led by Balwan Khokhar and his brother Krishan Khokhar, headed towards the Gurdwara.”

“I got worried. I ran to the Gurdwara with my 9-year-old brother, and we rescued the saroop (copy) of Sri Guru Granth Sahib ji. As my brother ran with me, I heard Mahendra Yadav shouting, ‘Yeh Saanp Ka Bacha Hai, Ise Maaro’ (He’s the offspring of the snakes, kill him).”

“We somehow managed to run back to our home, and I handed the saroop to my father, and hid. The mob had broken the gate, and had entered the home behind us. They had iron rods and swords in their hands. Seeing them, my 13-year-old brother came charging at them with a sword.”

By that time, other Sikh families had also woken up, and many charged at the attacking mob with swords and weapons. The two sides fought for at least four hours, and later the mob retreated.

“Around morning, Balwan Khokhar escorted the mob out of the area. He came to my father, and said sorry. I saw as the mob had burnt one of our trucks standing outside our house. Balwan had some policemen with him. They convinced the Sikhs to give up our arms, and said nothing will happen to us, as now the police have arrived. So all the Sikhs gave their arms to the police, and they took them away.”

Nirpreet added: “Balwan Khokhar convinced my father to accompany him outside our home to do ‘compromise’. One of the neighbours said my father won’t return alive.”

“The mob was waiting outside the street. As my father went out, the policemen went away, and the mob entered the street. Balwan Khokhar told them, ‘Jo Sardar Chorh Aye The, Vo Mai Le Aya hu’ (I’ve brought back the Sikh you had left behind). I saw the mob charge at my unarmed father. Ishwar Chand Sharabi gave kerosene oil… A police officer, I read his nameplate, Inspector NK Kaushik, gave the matchbox to the mob, saying, ‘Tumse Ek Sardar Nahi Jalta?’ (You can’t burn a Sikh?)”

“I saw as the mob burned my father alive, I couldn’t do anything. The mob had just gone away... So I asked my father to run. My father was on fire; he jumped into a nearby sewer to put out the fire."

But Nirpreet couldn't save him.

"Someone from the mob saw him. Captain Bhagmal Singh of the navy was on duty at that time, he tied my father with a telephone pole. And our neighbour Mrs Dua gave the kerosene to put him on fire, the second time… I pleaded with her not to do this. She didn't look at me, and instead said, 'This scoundrel deserves to die like this. He is very rich'. They set my father on fire again.”

“By that time, my father was almost burnt, and I couldn't help him. Then Balwan Khokhar hit my father on the head with an iron rod, and blood started spurting out of his nose and mouth. He then fell on the ground.”

Later that evening, a neighbour who was in the Indian Air Force rescued Nirpreet, her mother and siblings, and took them to the Palam Air Force Station.

“As we escaped the colony, I saw the charred dead body of my father lying on the ground. I didn't even tell my brothers or my mother that that was our father. I just kept looking at him. I couldn't even cry…”

On 2 November, Nirpreet came back to Raj Nagar with some Air Force officers, to rescue some other Sikh families.

“It was then at Manglapuri Road that I saw our constituency’s MP, Sajjan Kumar. He came in a police car, and addressed the mob and said, ‘Not even a single Sikh should be spared. The Hindus who are saving the Sikhs, burn their houses, too'.”

Deeming it unsafe to rescue anyone else afterwards, the officers escorted Nirpreet back to the Air Force Station, where she stayed for a few more days.
It was on 5 November, after the violence had subsided, that Nirpreet went back to Raj Nagar. She saw around 18 dead bodies lying in a farmhouse near her home. She couldn’t find her father’s body.

Nirpreet was just 16 when she lost her father, Nirmal Singh, a former armyman.

(Photo: The Quint)

A Daughter's Revenge, Unfulfilled

The following year, fearing her safety, Nirpreet’s family sent her to Punjab, and she started studying at Lyallpur Khalsa College, Jalandhar.

Like Bhagat, MP Sajjan Kumar was voted back to power in the December 1984 elections.

“It was here that I got angry. Our killers were being garlanded. So I joined the All India Sikh Students’ Federation (AISSF) in 1985. I had never even thought I would have to pick up arms. My father had many dreams for me, he wanted me to be an IAS officer. But I wanted to avenge his death. I lost everything, and my father’s killers were free.”

Nirpreet and her fellow militants had planned to kill the Palam attackers. In 1986, Nirpreet married a Khalistan Commando Force (KCF) member, Roshan Lal Bairagi aka Gurdev Singh. Shortly after their marriage, her husband was arrested by the police.

“My husband and I stayed in Punjab for a few days, then we moved to Delhi. Because we had to carry out the planned assassination. Just one day before we could kill them, one of our aides got greedy. I don't if he was scared... He disclosed our plan to the police. On 8 December 1986, my husband was arrested by the police. The newspaper read - 'Roshan Lal Bairagi arrested; Premika Faraar (paramour flees)'.”

Nirpreet went underground for a few years, and managed to escape to Harmandar Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar, where she hid with some other militants.

“In December 1986, after I had fled, they arrested my mother and her friend, and lodged them in Tihar jail. They would torture my mother and ask her where I was. I was the wife of a dreaded extremist… Both Delhi Police and Punjab Police were hunting me. I had nowhere else to go, so I hid in Harmandar Sahib.”

In 1986 and 1988, the Indian Army again stormed the Harmandar Sahib complex, in what was codenamed Operation Black Thunder 1 and 2.

It was during the second Operation Black Thunder — which started on 8 May 1985 —  that Nirpreet was finally arrested, on 15 May 1985.

“Then began torturing me. I was first jailed in Amritsar, then taken to Ludhiana jail, then to the Sangrur jail, and finally to Delhi’s Tihar jail in October 1988. Both my mother and I were arrested under TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act). So we didn’t know if we would ever be released…”

After spending three years in jail while being undertrial, Nirpreet’s mother, Sampuran Kaur, finally got bail in 1990.

It was when Sampuran was finally allowed to meet her daughter, that she found out that Nirpreet also had a son from her marriage with Gurdev Singh.

Nirpreet spent around eight years in jail, before being finally acquitted in 1996.

It was then that her life’s second battle began.

Nirpreet Kaur in Tihar jail in 1990s.

(Photo: Nirpreet Kaur/The Quint)

Of Guns, Prison, and Redemption

“When I was in jail, I was tortured a lot. But my biggest regret was that I couldn’t kill my father’s killers, and yet, I was still incarcerated for no real crime.”

“Kiran Bedi used to look after Tihar jail at that time. She once told me, ‘Nirpreet, you’re so well-educated; if you really want to avenge your father’s death, why don’t you start a legal fight against them?’ She and many others like her convinced me to give up guns, and start a legal fight against Sajjan Kumar and his aides.”

But the decades-long legal fight wasn’t easy.

“When I would go to the court hearings, they would call me a terrorist and anti-national. So I once said in court, ‘I might be an anti-national because I asked for justice. But they killed us, and demolished the (judicial) system. Who are they? Are they not deshdrohi (traitors)?”

Nirpreet started finding other eyewitnesses, including Jagdish Kaur, the key witness against Sajjan Kumar.

Supreme Court lawyer Advocate Harvinder Singh Phoolka, who has been fighting the 1984 victims’ cases pro bono for the last 40 years, credits Nirpreet for Sajjan Kumar’s incarceration.

“The case in which Sajjan Kumar has been jailed was listed in 2006. That was 22 years after 1984. This was the case in which Jagdish Kaur and Nirpreet Kaur were eyewitnesses. And I would say, this was primarily due to Nirpreet's efforts, that Sajjan Kumar is in jail today, after 34 long years,” Phoolka said.

Sajjan Kumar was finally sentenced to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court, on 17 December 2018, for his role in the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre.

And it is also due to Nirpreet’s search of another eyewitness, Lakhwinder Kaur, that earlier this year, Delhi’s Rouse Avenue court finally reopened charges against another Congress leader, Jagdish Tytler, for his alleged role in the violence — forty long years after the massacre.

Nirpreet currently resides in Mohali, Punjab, with her mother and kids. She had remarried, but is currently separated from her second husband.
She also runs an NGO for poor kids, and is currently running a cloud kitchen to make ends meet.

Her mother, Sampuran Kaur, is ailing due to old age.

“Sajjan Kumar didn’t want me to testify against him. So in 1994, while I was in jail, his men went to our home and threw my mother down the roof… she injured her legs very badly,” Nirpreet told us.

Nirpreet's mother Sampuran Kaur is now ailing with age. She resides with Nirpreet in her Mohali home.

(Photo: The Quint)

Nirpreet also continues to struggle to find jobs and livelihood for the other survivors of the 1984 violence — including widows and orphaned children.

And just like Darshan, she too has held several hunger strikes not just to demand justice from the government, but also jobs for the Sikh widows who were left behind.

Capital at Siege: Recording the Carnage

In November 1984, when the violence hit the national capital, journalist Seema Mustafa, Editor-in-Chief of The Citizen, and photojournalist Sondeep Shankar were amongst the first to hit the ground.

Talking to The Quint, Seema, who was then working with The Telegraph in Delhi, retold the horrors she saw on the streets of the capital.

“By the evening of 31 October, the news started spreading that Indira Gandhi was dead. And it started with violence. Now, they said that there were some people who were celebrating and distributing sweets. But that is not the point. The point is that the violence grew, and for 3-4 days in the capital of India, we were witness to a pogrom. And we were able to see how the state decided not to act, and willfully allowed people to be killed.”

Seema said she and Sondeep drove an old car around Delhi, and saw some bonfires burning in Lutyens’ Delhi.

“We stopped to see what they were burning, and I can never forget the shock that it was bodies. And we were shocked, but we had to do our job. So we went from bonfire to bonfire, counting the number of bodies being burned.”

Sondeep Shankar's photo of a wailing widow and other victims in a makeshift camp in New Delhi, November 1984.

(Photo: Sondeep Shankar)

Seema also refuted some rumours going around at the time.

“There were rumours that trains full of Hindu dead bodies were coming in... So I went to New Delhi Railway Station, and started counting bodies. At that time I was without a photographer, and I myself counted bodies from early morning till late afternoon. All the trains that were coming into the railway station had dead bodies, but dead bodies charred and burned, but only of Sikhs. And this has happened because of the rumours doing rounds in the town, that Hindus were being killed.”

“So I wanted to stop the rumours, and I told my editor, if you don’t say ‘200 Sikhs killed’ in the headline in the paper, I won’t file the copy. I said, ‘If we say 200 killed, it will feed into that rumour that Hindus are being killed.’ So I fought, and they put ‘200 Sikhs’ in the headline. And immediately, the rumours stopped. The next day, many journalists also questioned me, but I stood my ground.”

Apart from Seema Mustafa, many civil rights organisations also helped record the violence.

Activists like Uma Chakravarti and Nandita Haksar, along with the team of Peoples’ Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), were among the first ones to record the statements of the widows in rehabilitation centres.

The PUDR report, ‘Who are the Guilty?’, released in November 1984 itself, served as an important document in many court trials.

The Quint also thanks Sondeep Shankar for giving us access to his archival photos from November 1984.

The Widows' Colony

Come November, the lanes of Delhi’s Tilak Vihar fall silent, and grief runs in the cold winds.

The entire area gathers at Gurdwara Shaheed Ganj Sahib, raised in the memory of the ‘martyrs’ of the 1984 massacre, as prayers are held in their memory.

This is the ‘widow colony’ of Delhi —  perhaps the only such in the world — where the survivors of 1984 violence were rehabilitated.

For women like Bhagi Kaur, Pappi Kaur, Nirmal Kaur, and numerous others, visiting this Gurdwara is part of their daily schedule. For here, they get to remember their fallen kin.

The Gurdwara also houses a museum dedicated to these ‘martyrs’: a room just next to the main hall, with running walls full of photos of Sikhs of all ages — elderly, young and children. Every photo bears a name of the person killed. The photos serve as a living testimony to those fallen. It almost brings the chilling massacre alive.

Women survivors of the 1984 Anti-Sikh Massacre, and The Quint's team, at the museum at Tilak Vihar's Gurudwara Shaheed Ganj Sahib. 

(Photo: The Quint)

Every home in these narrow lanes has a story to tell — of wives widowed, children orphaned, women raped, and their loved ones being tortured and burnt alive in front of their eyes.

It was here in Tilak Vihar that The Quint met many of these women — Pappi Kaur, whose father and nine other family members were killed in Trilokpuri, and who had to raise her siblings afterwards as her mother would only mourn the dead; and widows like Bhagi Kaur and Nirmal Kaur who shared their hardships of how they raised their kids, after losing everything they had.

“Even the rehabilitation of these widows in Tilak Vihar was a failed effort. It was not done properly. And not just the government, I would say, even the Sikh community has failed to properly help them."

-Advocate Harvinder Singh Phoolka, Supreme Court Lawyer

Many of these women in Tilak Vihar continue to live with these horrors, and the hardships induced by the same, as justice continues to evade them, even after 40 years.

“There’s a clear pattern to these killings. All the initial reports, such as the PUDR and the Manushi report, point at there being a well-organised massacre,” says Paramjeet Singh, a researcher with the People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR).

Paramjeet added that there were many cases of rapes, as well, but they weren’t recorded in these reports.

“The Citizens For Democracy (CFD) report, Manushi report, and the PUDR report — all of them mentioned rapes, but not to that extent. So these stories have not come out. At that time, people were worried about the women and their 'honour'. Because at that time, in 1984, our society had a different approach towards 'women empowerment'. So maybe, the rape cases were not brought out, purposefully.”

Paramjeet Singh, Researcher, People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR)

“PUDR had also got access to some hand-written complaints, affidavits and FIRs. Many of these hand-written complaints mentioned rape, but there was no mention of the same in affidavits or the FIRs," Paramjeet added.

Through Her Words: The Kaurs of 1984

The Quint’s documentary, ‘The Kaurs of 1984’, is inspired by the book by the same name by Sanam Sutirath Wazir.

(Photo: The Quint)

The Quint’s documentary, ‘The Kaurs of 1984’, is inspired by the book by the same name by Sanam Sutirath Wazir, who was formerly associated with Amnesty International.

Sanam’s book released earlier this year, records the stories of around 40 such women in detail. Sanam, who hails from Jammu and Kashmir, has been closely working with these women for many years now, and started working on the book in 2019.

“It was raining one day, and I went to one of the survivors, and she wasn't home. And her neighbour, who would not generally speak to me, and I was very interested in talking to her. And that day, because it was raining and the other person wasn't home, she invited me in. So I went in and she offered me tea,” recalled Sanam.

“So I asked her why she wouldn’t talk to me. She said, 'Mai Chaurasi ki Ladki Hoon’ (I am a woman of 1984). For a while, I didn't realise what she said. Then it hit me, and I realised what she was talking about… And when she finally started talking to me after a few months, she told me that she was gangraped.”

“She was gangraped, and when the mob was taking her away, she told her mother, 'Mummy mainu chhad ke na jaeen (Mother, please don't leave me afterwards)’.”

Sanam said it was a very triggering incident for him, as a researcher and a storyteller.

“And I'm sure there are many women... I met many of them. So there are many, many Kaurs of 1984. And that's why I think it's important to tell what happened to the Kaurs,” said Sanam, when asked about the inspiration to write this book.

Sanam also complained that the priorities as to their rehabilitation have been wrong.

“We have only spoken about this terrible word called compensation, but we've never spoken about reparations and reconciliation.”

He adds, “These women don't want to forgive anyone, they don't want to forget it. What they're looking for is closure, and that closure comes with the acknowledgement that yes, this has happened, and as a nation, we are sorry.” 

“We are in the 40th year, and maybe in the next few years, many of these women will not be around to talk about what happened to them.”

The book, ‘The Kaurs of 1984’, written by Sanam Sutirath Wazir, covers the stories of at least 40 such women. It has been published by Harper Collins, and is available to order online.