Srinagar (KMS): The State has so far failed to take action against perpetrators of the January 13,1989, anti-Sikh riots in Jammu and Udhampur. The riots left 14 persons dead, including two killed in alleged police firing, and several injured.
The failure of the authorities to take action against the involved persons and non-disclosure of the Justice Ansari Commission report into the riots have disappointed the victims’ families.
The Justice MM Ansari Commission report, which was submitted in 1990, is yet to be released officially. A copy of the nearly 250- page report revealed that the commission had held the police and the civil administration responsible for negligence, contradictory claims and improper intelligence as well as failure in scotching rumours.
The riots broke out first during a procession taken out for celebrating the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh on January 13, 1989. The atmosphere was surcharged due to the hanging of Satwant Singh, an assassin of Indira Gandhi, a week earlier. A number of Sikh youths carried posters of Satwant and raised anti-India slogans.
A police team seized the posters and stopped the sloganeering. Thereafter, violence broke out when a few persons threw stones and boiling water on the procession. The police claimed that they posted its personnel on roofs, but the District Magistrate told the commission that no cop was deployed there.
The commission came as a big hope for the victims, but they were disappointed, as its report was never released. Dalbir Singh, whose brother, Gurdeep Singh died of a gunshot in police firing, said that the successive regimes kept the report under wraps to help the police and the accused.
