NEW DELHI (The Thursday Times) — H.S. Phoolka, the senior advocate who spent decades fighting cases for victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh violence, has challenged Sonia Gandhi’s account of the killings in her new memoir and demanded that she either place documentary evidence on record or apologise.
“It was neither a spontaneous riot nor a Hindu-Sikh clash,” Phoolka, who is now a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, told a press conference in Punjab this week. He alleged that Congress leaders, workers, and organised mobs targeted Sikhs while the police looked away.
Sonia Gandhi’s memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, went on sale on Tuesday. In it she calls the violence a “tragic and shameful chapter” and defends her husband, Rajiv Gandhi, against accusations of complicity. Nearly 3,000 Sikhs were killed after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984.
The Army question
Phoolka took issue with the memoir’s account of why the Army was not deployed sooner. According to him, the book says Rajiv Gandhi asked the Army chief, General A.S. Vaidya, on the night of October 31 to call out troops, and that the general hesitated because units near Delhi had Sikh soldiers and summoned troops from distant stations instead.
Phoolka called the claim “factually untenable”. Citing the records of the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission, he said nearly 6,000 troops were already available in Delhi between the night of October 31 and the morning of November 1 but were kept in their barracks, and that more than 2,000 Sikh lives could have been saved had they been deployed without delay.
He also challenged Sonia Gandhi to name a single incident of violence in Delhi on the afternoon of October 31. The city was calm until about 5 pm, he said, when a mob attacked the motorcade of President Giani Zail Singh outside the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, which he described as the start of a planned operation.
Phoolka asked why, if Rajiv Gandhi bore no responsibility, no police or civil officer was ever punished for the delay, and said leaders named by victims had instead been given party tickets, ministerial posts, and promotions.
A widening row
The BJP has seized on the 1984 passages, with its national spokesperson C.R. Kesavan saying the memoir could have been titled “Whitewashing”. In Bihar, the Janata Dal (United) has objected to the book’s portrayal of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, while Congress leaders have told critics to read the book before attacking it.
Phoolka said history had to be tested against commission records, inquiry files, and testimony, “not personal memories or political interpretations”.
