The 1984 anti-Sikh riots, triggered by Indira Gandhi's assassination, resulted in over 3,000 deaths, with allegations of state complicity and organized violence by Congress leaders. Survivors recount horrific attacks, while justice remains elusive despite decades of inquiries and legal battles.
“WHEN A MIGHTY TREE FALLS, THE EARTH SHAKES A LITTLE,” were the words chosen by Rajiv Gandhi at his first public speech as the new Prime Minister on November 19, 1984, addressing the 1984 anti-Sikh violence that engulfed the North India. The Congress leader took the mantle after his mother and then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. Over the course of four to five days, North India, especially the national capital Delhi, witnessed one of the most gruesome and dark chapters in its history.
42 years after the incident, Indira Gandhi remains a divisive figure in politics. Her actions as the PM, her assassination and the unprecedented targeted attacks on Sikh minorities, leading to over 3,000 deaths as per official records, still haunts the families. Meanwhile, Rajiv Gandhi’s address at the Boat Club, and using the metaphor for the riots as “little” earth tremor after the felling of a mighty tree (Indira Gandhi’s death) also remains a controversial take. Critics see it as an attempt to diminish the scale of the massacre. Here is a brief history of what led to this violent chapter, the horrific personal accounts, and a look at how “little” the ground really shook.
Although the immediate cause of the anti-sikh violence was Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the chain of events leading up to the massacre had been building up for years. Military action at Amritsar’s Golden Temple — Sikh’s holiest shrine — in June 1984 as part of the Operation Blue Star, flared up the tensions between the government and the Sikh community. The Operation was seen as a necessary move by the government to bring down the Khalistani movement and the separatist movement’s leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.
The Nanavati Commission — Justice G.T. Nanavati-led inquiry commission set up by the NDA government in 2000 to investigate the killings of innocent Sikhs in 1984 — gave its detailed report on the riots in 2005. It acknowledges that the assassination of Indira Gandhi directly “led to violent attacks on Sikhs and their properties in Delhi and other parts of the country.” It also notes that the violence had begun in Delhi as early as on the same evening of the PM’s death on October 31, 1984.
The Nanavati commission examined various witness accounts and affidavits. It found that local Congress leaders and workers had incited mobs and encouraged them to attack Sikh families. There were meetings held on the evening of October 31 with specific instructions to kill Sikhs and loot their homes and shops.
Ensaaf — a non-profit human rights organization — in its independent report published in 2004 titled, Twenty Years of Impunity: The November 1984 Pogroms of Sikhs in India, also analyzed survivors’ accounts and official records. It alleged that the pogrom was a “well-organised plan” by the Congress leaders, who allegedly used voters’ list and ration cards to identify Sikh households. There are also accounts of workers distributing kerosene, iron rods and arranging transport for mobilizing the attacks.
Most gruesome violence in the national capital was witnessed on November 1 and 2, 1984, though the targeted attack throughout North India continued for at least 3 more days. According to official figures cited by the Nanavati commission, 2,733 Sikhs were killed in Delhi between October 31 and November 5, with more killings witnessed in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar and other states, taking the number of casualties well above 3,000. However, Sikh and humanitarian organizations dispute this number and put the estimate to nearly 10,000.
The official government report mentions the horrific account in detail. It alleged that Sikh men were dragged out of their homes, beaten and burnt alive. In several instances, attackers placed tyres around victims’ necks, poured kerosene or petrol over them and set them on fire. Houses, shops, taxis and gurudwaras were also looted and burnt.
Rahul Bedi, a journalist from The Indian Express, filed a written complaint that more than 350 people were killed from his locality of Trilokpuri in East Delhi. According to him the violent episode lasted over 30 hours, ending on the evening of November 2, 1984. However, contrary to Bedi’s account, the official toll recorded for the locality just shows 95 deaths.
Amid this massacre, the role of police and authorities became a central issue, adding to the argument of the violence being a state-sponsored pogrom. The People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and the People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) published their own joint investigation titled Who Are the Guilty? in November 1984. It alleged that police officers, in many localities, were supplying diesel from their jeeps to the arsonists. Survivors accounts from other humanitarian organizations also corroborate such accounts.
In Twenty Years of Impunity, the survivors’ affidavit collected by Ensaaf noted that a sitting Congress Member of the Parliament (MP), Sajjan Kumar, was present at the scene and was leading the mob. A surviving widow from the massacre recalls seeing her neighbor's son, who had been her own son’s childhood friend, leading the mob that killed her husband and two sons. She also claims in her official affidavit that the mob sexually assaulted her daughters-in-law.
In an interview with NewsGram, senior advocate H.S. Phoolka — a senior advocate in the Supreme Court, who was prominent in fighting the legal battle for victims of 1984 riots — recalled how his own residence was attacked on November 2. He said that his Hindu landlady stood in the stairway to stop the mob from reaching his family, while her daughter-in-law hid him and his wife in a space above stored blankets.
Phoolka survived that night because of a moment of bravery from her landlady and went on to fight for those who unfortunately didn’t.
The first major inquiry into the violence, headed by Justice Ranganath Misra, submitted its initial report in 1986. The NDA government then appointed the Nanavati commission in 2000, which submitted its two-volume report in February 2005 after examining hundreds of affidavits, including those filed before the Misra commission.
However, Advocate H.S. Phoolka, while speaking to NewsGram, notes that his fight for justice began within weeks of the massacre. He recalled returning to Delhi on November 22, 1984, after initially deciding to relocate to Punjab with his wife. When he learnt that lawyers were needed at relief camps across the capital, he visited one in Farsh Bazar, housing survivors from Trilokpuri.
Phoolka was struck by the large number of women and children at the camp and learnt that most of the male members of their families had been killed. The sight changed his plans and he decided to stay in the capital with his wife. In the first week of December 1984, the advocate filed his first case in the Delhi High Court pertaining to four orphaned girls whose family members had been killed in the anti-sikh riots. The experience marked the beginnings of a decades-long legal battle that would include cases against accused Congress leaders including Sajjan Kumar, H.K.L. Bhagat and Jagdish Tytler.
The Nanavati Commission noted that 587 FIRs were filed in Delhi in connection with the violence. Out of which, 241 were closed as untraced and 253 ended in acquittals. The commission later found credible evidence that certain local Congress leaders were directly involved in the massacre, leading to re-opening of cases marked as “untraceable.” However, it didn’t find any evidence that Rajiv Gandhi or other high-ranking Congress leaders had any part in organizing the attacks.
Most notable convictions in the case are that of Congress MP Sajjan Kumar in the Delhi High Court in 2018. He was sentenced for life for killing five Sikhs in the Raj Nagar area. The Congress MP was also acquitted in a Janakpuri-related murder case in January 2026. He passed away on August 20, 2026, while serving his life sentence in Tihar jail.
42 years after the violence the conviction rate remains sparse. In a staggering statistic, just 28 cases have ended in convictions, out of which only 13 were for murder — a number lower than the committees and commissions that have investigated the violence over the years, 14.
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