Senior advocate H.S. Phoolka on Saturday released a documentary series titled 1984 Genocide. Unending Quest for Justice on the 40th anniversary of the pogrom.
Phoolka, a former leader of the Opposition from the AAP in Punjab, told The Telegraph that his objective was to document the long legal battle that did little to bring to justice those responsible for the massacre of the Sikhs after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
“Many things were not on record and this documentary will make future generations aware of what all has taken place,” Phoolka explained.
The 20-part series, 12 of which were released on his channel https://www.youtube.com/hsphoolka on Saturday, has interviews of victims and Phoolka himself on the killings from October 31 to November 3, 1984, as well as the numerous panels that probed them.
The series was made along with Delhi-based filmmaker Abdul Mujeeb and Nitika Khaitan, a lawyer and doctoral scholar at Yale University in the US.
Mujeeb told this paper: “Our generation doesn’t have role models. Sir (Phoolka) has given his full life to fight these cases. We want this story to reach the maximum number of people.”
The documentary series is open for use by any website or telecaster. Eight more episodes in Hindi are expected to be released inChandigarh soon.
At an event in the Press Club of India on Saturday, Phoolka pointed out that despite 15 commissions and committees looking intothe tragedy, convictions have been secured only in 12 murder cases.
“Delhi police, followed by the CBI, gave continuous clean chits. This was murder not only of citizens but of the justice system as well…. The Supreme Court should apologise to the victims for allowing a Sikh to be killed every minute (on average) in just three days (from November 1 to 3) in Delhi,” he added.
According to official estimates, 2,733 people were killed in Delhi and 586 in other parts of India. Out of the 587 FIRs filed for rioting in Delhi, convictions were secured in only 25 cases, according to the People’s Union for Democratic Rights. Sixty people have been convicted of murder, including former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar. Twenty cases are pending, including those against Congress leaders Jagdish Tytler and Kumar.
Phoolka believes that had the investigations been fair, at least 5,000 people would have been convicted.
“The same policemen and the same ministers remained after the riots. These policemen did not record the statements of victims properly. The commissions (on inquiry) called them made-up statements. Judges should have noted the dishonest investigation and not let off the accused. Justice Muralidhar (and Justice Vinod Goel, while convicting Sajjan Kumar in the Delhi High Court in 2018)had noted that these were not ordinary crimes but genocide,” he said.
Darshan Kaur, a former resident of Trilokpuri in East Delhi where one of the worst massacres took place, narrated her ordeal of losing 12 kin and wandering the streets for three days.
“If Indira Gandhi’s assassins were hanged, why not those who killed our families?... The compensation of ₹3.5 lakh to ₹5 lakh was a pittance and we want government jobs for our grandchildren. At least then they will be able to compete as equals as we lost everything in 1984,” she said.
