As part of the accord with the Akali Dal party in 1985, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi appointed Ranganath Misra, a sitting Supreme Court judge, to inquire into ‘the allegations in regard to the incidents of organised violence’ that took place in Delhi’.

  • Strict terms of references meant that no individual could specifically be investigated.
  • 2,905 affidavits – sworn written testimonies made by survivors and witnesses – that were submitted, the Commission only selected 128, out of which only thirty – just one per cent of the total – were eventually used in the investigation.1
  • Among the victim affidavits rejected outright, Misra refused to take testimony from journalists Rahul Kuldip Bedi and Joseph Maliakan of The Indian Express, who had been among the first outsiders to witness the aftermath in the killing lanes of Trilokpuri. Maliakan later revealed that he was called into the court chamber by an officer of the Commission in order to dissuade him from filing an affidavit as he ‘had not suffered in the anti-Sikh pogrom’.2
  • At times, relevant documents were either not produced or disallowed entirely. When they were brought out, they were not shown to the victims’ representatives.3
  • The human rights organisation, the Citizen’s Justice Committee (CJC) made requests to cross-examine nine key officials they regarded as having played significant roles during the massacres. These included Lieutenant Governor Gavai who was responsible for law and order in Delhi, his replacement and former home secretary, Mr Wali, and Police Commissioner Tandon. Misra refused these requests.4
  • The inquiry also suffered from a serious lack of transparency. Proceedings were conducted in closed sessions with both the media and even victims’ lawyers prevented from attending, precluding any possibility of the cross-examination of witnesses.5
  • However, this did not prevent lawyers representing several anti-victim groups gaining access to sensitive information in advance, in particular prior to victim testimony hearings. Groups including the Citizens Forum for Truth, Citizens Committee for Peace and Harmony and the Nagrik Suraksha Samiti (Arya Samaj), had all argued that the massacres had not been organised but were a spontaneous reaction to both Mrs Gandhi’s murder and earlier killings of Hindus in Punjab. The lawyer acting on behalf of the victims, H. S. Phoolka, characterised these groups as ‘proxies for the culprits as they were using information to intimidate the victims just before their deposition’.6

Conclusions

  • What took place in November 1984 was more of an unavoidable backlash than organised mass murder.7
  • Misra blamed ‘anti-social forces’ and the great number of ‘criminals’ in Delhi, which in part was due to the rise in the city’s population.8
  • One young lawyer at the time later recalled how Judge Misra had responded to a grieving father, who had just described the brutal murder of his son, with a ridiculous and deeply insensitive analogy:

Sir, your story is a bit like this one. Listen to me carefully. Imagine you and your son are going somewhere on a scooter. You stop at the railway crossing. Zillions of cars and scooters are waiting for the train to pass by. No one has any idea about a huge vulture flying high up in the skies, right above you. In the vulture’s beak, there is a snake. Suddenly, it slithers and manages to free itself; the snake falls down, and finally lands on your son, sitting behind you on your scooter. The snake bites his neck. Your son dies that very instant. And that very instant, the vulture lands, collects the snake and flies away. See, it is no one’s fault. Do you think it is somebody’s fault? Not really. This is exactly what happened to your family. It is no one’s fault.

Judge Misra’s statement from Misra Commission of Inquiry, 1987, quoted in Jaspreet Singh, ‘Carbon’ Open Magazine, 9 November 2013
  • When examining the role of the Congress Party, the majority of its members under examination were found innocent of any involvement in the violence.9
  • Although most Congress leaders implicated in the attacks were either overlooked or absolved without investigation, particular attention was paid by the Commission to challenging the allegations levelled against H. K. L. Bhagat. Misra argued that, having examined the relevant affidavits, he found the accusations to be baseless, refused to allow Bhagat to be cross-examined and concluded:

Mr. Bhagat, being a sitting MP and Minister, was not likely to misbehave in the manner alleged.

Judge Misra’s statement from Misra Commission of Inquiry, 1987 10
  • The names and addresses of witnesses who testified against senior Congress leaders and police officers were reportedly shared with the anti-victim groups and lawyers despite warnings from human rights organisations.
  • Misra rounded off his report with a request that people forget what had happened: ‘Indians should join the national march ahead by forgetting the unpleasant episodes of the cloudy days and looking forward to bright sunshine ahead’. 
  • He then went on to extol the merits of education, the importance of good manners and the virtues of patriotism:

Every Indian must feel proud to have been born in India.

Judge Misra’s statement from Misra Commission of Inquiry, 198711

When the government tabled the report in February 1987, the presiding officers of the two houses of parliament appeared to have acted impartially by ruling out any debate on its findings. Thus, the parliament of the world’s largest democracy abdicated its primary function to hold the government of the day to account.

According to a 1991 Asia Watch report by Patricia Gossman, the Misra Commission recommended no criminal prosecution of any individual, and it cleared all high-level officials of directing the pogroms. In its findings, the commission did acknowledge that many of the victims testifying before it had received threats from local police. While the commission noted that there had been ‘widespread lapses’ on the part of the police, it concluded that ‘the allegations before the commission about the conduct of the police are more of indifference and negligence during the riots than of any wrongful overt act’.12

Judge Ranganath Misra went on to become the country’s chief justice in 1990. Three years later, he was appointed the first chairman of the National Human Rights Commission of India. In 1998 when he took his place as a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament, as a Congress Party representative.

The Misra Commission of Inquiry of 1987 into the 1984 Sikh Genocide was the first official attempt to exonerate the guilty. The judge would later join the Congress Party as an MP.

  1. Justice Denied: A Critique of the Misra Commission Report on the Riots in November 1984. People’s Union for Democratic Rights & People’s Union for Civil Liberties. April 1987. ↩︎
  2. Joseph Maliakan, ‘1984 riots in Trilokpuri: ‘Bodies of hundreds of Sikhs were scattered’, The Indian Express, 3 November 2014. ↩︎
  3. Justice Denied: A Critique of the Misra Commission Report on the Riots in November 1984. People’s Union for Democratic Rights & People’s Union for Civil Liberties. April 1987. ↩︎
  4. Justice Ranganath Misra Commission of Inquiry. 1987. ↩︎
  5. Manoj Mitta and Harvinder Phoolka, When a Tree Shook Delhi, 2007, p 130. ↩︎
  6. ibid, p 125. ↩︎
  7. Justice Ranganath Misra Commission of Inquiry. 1987. ↩︎
  8. ibid. ↩︎
  9. Patricia Gossman, Punjab in Crisis: Asia Watch Report, 1991, p 24. ↩︎
  10. Justice Ranganath Misra Commission of Inquiry. 1987. ↩︎
  11. ibid. ↩︎
  12. Patricia Gossman, Punjab in Crisis: Asia Watch Report, 1991, p 24. ↩︎