Tomorrow may be too late
BBC and AIR news broadcasts announced Bhindranwale’s death in the morning on 7 June 1984. When I reached office... the young officers were huddled in small groups... I realized that the Sikh employees of the Department would have been appalled by the ferocity of army action and the damage to the Akal Takht and the Golden Temple complex. I took it upon myself to call all four Sikh section officers (SOS) at the headquarters to my room… I told them that what had happened was... neither indicative of any Hindu- Sikh divide nor was it motivated out of any genuine threat perception about the demand for Khalistan. In fact, these issues were deliberately created by some senior Congress leaders for electoral gains... In the evening... I visited Gurudwara Bangla Sahib to see if there was any impact of Operation Blue Star on the Sikhs there... small groups of Sikhs were standing outside here and there, animatedly discussing the outcome of Operation Blue Star. A number of placards in Punjabi with inscriptions in red ink were also displayed prominently... one of the placards displayed near the langar entrance of the gurudwara... read, ‘Singh sahib, Bhai Amrik Singh ate Thara Singh nu tasehe de ke marya gaya hai. Hun is k ... Brahmani nu maran da har Sikh da farz banada hai.’ (Sikh brethren, be informed that brothers Amrik Singh and Thara Singh were tortured to death. Now it becomes the duty of every Sikh to kill this Brahmani).
The word ‘ Brahmani’ was used for Indira Gandhi with a derogatory prefix... The next morning, I called on Director ( R) Gary Saxena in his office and informed him of what I had seen and observed in Gurudwara Bangla Sahib complex... Coming straight to the point, I said that in my assessment there was a high probability of her being assassinated in the next six months, and it was the duty of the concerned security agencies to save her life at all costs…
Having heard my assessment, Gary remarked that if such a thing happened there would be large- scale killing of Sikhs in Delhi. It appeared the subject had been discussed the previous day at a highlevel meeting… ‘That is what they want,’ I said. When Gary asked who ‘ they’ were, I said, ‘ Obviously, Pakistan, and some Western countries, where there is a comparatively larger presence of Sikhs.’
...October 21 was a Sunday. I had accompanied my wife and two children to the Lady Hardinge Medical College campus, adjacent to Connaught Place, to meet my wife’s eldest sister Dr Paramjeet Panag. On our return journey, as we approached the crossing of Akbar Road and Safdarjung Road, while turning towards Gymkhana Club, I saw two young policemen posted at the corner of 1 Akbar Road, part of the prime minister’s official residential complex. Both were armed with Sten guns.
One of them was a 5-foot-8inch stocky Sikh who appeared to be in his mid-twenties with a closely trimmed beard. Seeing him posted there, I expressed
my surprise to my wife as to why armed Sikh police security guards, who were removed from duty at the PM’S residence after Operation Blue Star, had
been redeployed. ‘ This is the surest and the easiest way of getting Mrs Gandhi assassinated!’ I exclaimed in dismay. From the photographs that
appeared in the newspapers later, I identified the young Sikh police constable I had seen as one of the two assassins, Satwant Singh.