By Chander Suta Dogra

Raising the stakes in their bid to initiate a UN-led investigation into the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, two of the victims of the violence have recorded their testimony for the first time at the New York office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHRC), according to a lawyer representing the rights group Sikhs For Justice (SFJ).

Of the two, Jasbir Singh is a prime witness in a case related to the riots in India against Congress leader Jagdish Tytler. Singh lost 26 members of his family in the massacre. The other witness, Gurdeep Kaur, who travelled from Ludhiana to give her testimony, has a bedridden husband who was injured in the riots 30 years ago.

Speaking to The Sunday Express, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, legal advisor to SFJ, said, “Our efforts have borne fruit and resulted in the testimony of these two surviving witnesses, after the UNHRC found some merit in our stand that after 30 years of apathy from successive governments, there is evidence to show that the killings were spread across 100 cities and towns in 15 states.”

Pannu added, “In a two-hour-long session (on Friday), the two witnesses gave an account of how they saw Congress leaders carrying voter lists and leading death squads with the police, and Delhi administration turning a blind eye to the killing of Sikh men and rape of Sikh women after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.”

According to a statement issued by SFJ, they have also submitted a report titled, ‘November 1984 Sikh Genocide’, which they have claimed contains details of the killings, along with government records of claims of loss of life and damage to property filed by victims.

The SFJ, which is fighting for the right of self-determination for Sikhs and believes in a separate Sikh state, had in November 2013 petitioned UNHRC in Geneva to have the killings classified as ‘Genocide’ under Article 2 of the UN Convention on Genocide.

Against the government figures of some 3000 deaths, Sikh groups have claimed “on the basis of new evidence” that 35,000 Sikhs had died in the riots.

The petition, which was supported by 10 lakh signatures from Sikhs across the world, claimed that successive governments in India have deliberately misled the world community into believing that the 1984 killings were ‘riots’ confined to Delhi, when “there is ample evidence to the contrary.”

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