Harmohindar Kaur (74), who suffers from a neurological disorder, struggles to remember her daily activities, like if she has eaten lunch or not. It’s the same this afternoon. But, ask her what happened on November 1, 1984, at her old home in Kanpur’s Sharda Nagar, and her memory is almost vivid. “Bahut bheed thi. Sab chilla rahe the sardaron ko maaro (There were so many people. They were all shouting, kill the sardars). Our house was surrounded from all sides,” says Kaur, who retired as a lecturer from Guru Nanak Degree College in Kanpur’s Sundar Nagar 10 years ago. Twenty members of the family, including nine children, were in the 3,500-sq ft bungalow at the time. The mob would kill Kaur’s husband Bhagat Singh, who was 35 at the time, and her 32-year-old brother-in-law Harbans Singh. The Singh family had a refrigeration business in Kanpur, with Kaur’s father-in-law moving to the city some time in the 1960s. The mob also set on fire an Ambassador car and four motorcycles owned by the family and looted their house. Kaur raised three very young children on her own — son Rana Ranveer Singh, and daughters Tarandeep Kaur and Jasdeep Kaur — who are now in their 40s. The family sold the bungalow the next year and moved to Punjab, before returning soon after. The violence that day was part of the riots against Sikhs after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. Delhi saw the worst killings; Kanpur came second, with 127 deaths, a fact that is largely forgotten in the public consciousness, in all the attention on the national capital. In 2019, the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh constituted a Special Investigative Team to probe all the 1,251 cases linked to the anti-Sikh riots in Kanpur — the first such action, 35 years after what had happened. The SIT shortlisted 40 cases that were of a “serious” nature, of which the police have filed chargesheets in 11 and submitted closure reports in the remaining 29, citing lack of evidence as the reason. So far, 15 people have been arrested in connection with the cases. The BJP government at the Centre also reopened more than 70 cases in the 1984 riots that happened in Delhi. Kaur is happy that something is finally being done about what happened, but as she says, it has come too late, “after more than three decades”. “I don’t remember any of the faces. Every time I think about that day, all I remember is a crowd shouting for our blood, and stabbing my husband,” she says, pointing to her stomach to show where he was struck by the rioters. “They made chhed (holes) in him and my dewar (brother-in-law). They first beat them up with sticks and then stabbed them. All the children and women of the house were locked in a room,” she adds, starting to cry, before wiping her face and resuming. Her children had gone for classes, and just returned when the attack started. The person who came to their rescue was a Hindu neighbour, Kaur says, Ram Govind Dixit. “My children used to call him chacha. He saved us, but could not save my husband and dewar. He went to the local police station and brought policemen in a jeep. Only when they came could we get out,” Kaur says, adding that she still shudders thinking what would have happened if police had not reached. “He (Dixit) took us all in the vehicles he brought and we went to hospital, where my husband and dewar died.” The family initially shifted to Brahm Nagar, 5 km away, for a month, and then to their village in Punjab’s Mohali district. Kaur’s son Ranveer (49), who took over the family’s refrigeration business, says they returned to Kanpur in 1985 after they were assured that their lives would not be at risk. “We were apprehensive, but we came back. We started living in a rented place, which we later bought. And this is where we made home once again,” he says. The family received compensation twice — Rs 20,000 in 1984 and then Rs 5 lakh in 2004. In 1993, the family got a 200-sq m plot for Rs 1.5 lakh at subsidised rates. Ranveer, a mechanical engineer who says he studied in Punjab to stay away from Kanpur, says his mother struggled a lot. “She worked so hard. She gave us everything. She was a homemaker, but she went back to teaching and then did a second Masters, which helped her become a lecturer,” he says, sitting in his basement office in Kanpur’s Brahm Nagar area, from where he runs the refrigeration business. Their Sharda Nagar bungalow has seen reconstruction in parts since the family sold it. Ranveer says he has visited it several times. “Parts of it have changed, but there are some portions which are still the same.” One of these visits was when the police took them to the home 10 months ago as part of their investigation. Kaur says she couldn’t help the police at all. “I don’t remember the faces,” she repeats, looking helpless. “My children who were small then have their own kids now.” In connection with the deaths of Kaur’s husband and brother-in-law, a case was filed against unidentified persons at the Kalyanpur Police Station. With the police not able to trace any of the accused, a closure report was filed, Kaur says. Police officers with the SIT say the investigation into the riots has not been easy. One of them, refusing to be identified, says most people who lost family members fled and never came back. “It has been difficult for us to find people who were here when the violence happened. Also, it has been so long. It took me three months to find one person’s address, only to realise he was dead.” Superintendent of Police and SIT member Balendu Bhushan said his team had identified 96 accused. “Out of the 96, only 73 are still alive. We have arrested 15 so far. Of the remaining 58, there are several who can’t move because of their age and health conditions.” About Kaur’s case, Bhushan said: “When we asked them, they didn’t give a proper statement. We will try again.”
