Over 90% of shops, houses targeted belonged to non-Jats: Panel report

Read | As attacks spread, policemen deserted their posts, sided with protesters

The panel, which recorded depositions from 3,000 witnesses, is in the final stages of preparing its report, which The Indian Express has accessed. Based on the panel’s findings, The Indian Express had earlier reported that a section of the police force had deserted their posts during those three days of arson in February.

The panel had also found that senior officers relegated powers to juniors while others failed to respond on time to warnings from the Centre.

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Regarding the targetting of non-Jat establishments, the panel found instances in which rows of shops were torched in Gohana, Rohtak and Jhajjar, except those belonging to Jats.

Records of claims for compensation received by the state government show that 1,789 properties were damaged, including 1,500 in urban areas and 289 in rural areas.

The panel noted a number of instances in which traders took advantage of the arson and gutted their own shops to claim the insurance amount or compensation. Of the 2,085 claims received by the government, around 40 have turned out to be suspicious.

Read | Officers shirked duty, passed buck, ignored alerts: Jat agitation probe

Based on testimonies and visits to the violence-hit areas, the panel observed that non-Jat communities retaliated by damaging statues of Jat leaders, Jat dharamshalas, and shops and houses belonging to Jats.

The panel also recorded specific cases where police personnel were found missing amid the violence. In one instance, the panel found, police did not move to save a marketplace in Sonipat’s Gohana that was on fire for over seven hours despite a large security contingent being present near the spot.

In another incident in Gohana, arsonists torched a prominent bookstore owned by a non-Jat, the panel was informed. In his statement, the bookstore owner alleged that he received no help despite making frantic calls to the fire station.

A fire tender reached the spot after he had lost everything, he told the panel, claiming that he was also subsequently assaulted by a Jat fire officer. The officer failed to give any satisfactory reply when questioned by the panel, documents show.

The panel also questioned senior IAS and IPS officers at the helm of affairs about the reasons for not invoking the National Security Act and not making preventive arrests when the situation was deteriorating in as many as eight districts of the state. However, documents show, most of the officers replied to the panel saying that they could not do so because the government was in constant touch with various Jat leaders till February 18.

The officers also told the panel that if they had applied the NSA, they would have become “scapegoats” and been held responsible for failure of talks between the Jat leaders and the government.

‘Cops bribed arsonists, dressed as wedding guests to help foreigners’

The panel has recorded several instances in which police and the army saved people from being attacked. In Rohtak, for instance, police told the panel that they airlifted a group of foreign nationals, who were stuck in a Rohtak factory premises, to Delhi in helicopters.

“Policemen pasted marriage function stickers on their cars, and dressed up as wedding guests to take the foreign nationals out of the troubled area. In one sortie, police even had to bribe the arsonists to let them pass through a blockade,” a senior police officer is learnt to have told the panel.

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