Operation Bluestar anniversary: 38 years on, headcount of those killed in 37 gurdwaras still disputed

PATIALA: Some 38 years after the Operation Bluestar, there is still no clarity on the number of dead at 37 gurdwaras across Punjab, including the Darbar Sahib in Amritsar, in the Army action. There is no official record to confirm the number of casualties.
SGPC former president Kirpal Singh Badungar said the neither the Union government nor the Army has ever released the figures of those killed during the operation. “The attack was not just limited to the Darbar Sahib, but had been carried out at 37 gurdwaras simultaneously. In Patiala, the operation lasted for several hours during which the Army search each and every room of the shrine and detained whosoever was present there, including women and children. There was firing, in which several were killed and those who survived were detained and blindfolded. No one could ever know how many were killed and the Army never released any figures,” he said
According to the report prepared Justice C S Tiwana, a retired judge of the Punjab and Haryana high court, who headed the inquiry commission set up by the state government, a portion of which was published in book ‘State Terrorism In Punjab - A Report’, brought out by the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab in 1989, “a curfew had been imposed in the whole of Punjab for 36 hours and Army had taken over. The Army attacked Gurdwara Dukhniwaran, where 275 persons were shot down.” The report stated that the attack got little public notice in the backdrop of a bigger raid on the Golden Temple.
The report also stated that detainees were taken to Lada Khoti in Sangrur, a former pleasure resort of the Maharaja of Patiala, which was turned into police interrogation centre, and kept in illegal detention.
Badungar, who was in Patiala on the day of the attack, said the action was similar to the one on the Golden Temple. “Armoured vehicles entered the gurdwara lodge to kill Sikh militants. It has never been known how these militants were identified,” he said.
Former MP and Akali leader Prem Singh Chandumajra, who left the gurdwara two hours before the Army operation, said all those present at the shrine were detained and there was no way anyone could have counted the number of those killed in the Army operation.
Ajaib Singh Gill, who was the manager at Gurdwara Dukhniwaran Sahib at the time of the Army operation, said he cremated 17 bodies, including those of three woman and a labourer from UP. He said he could not visit all the areas inside the gurdwara — the lodge, the main hall and the sarovar — and could never ascertain the exact number of those killed.
Harvinder Singh Gill, a member of the All India Sikh Students Federation, who was inside the gurdwara and detained, said he had counted 22 bodies.