Oblivious to the irate mob blocking the road below, 80-year-old Ajeet Kaur tosses on her bed in a dingy one-room flat in Tilak Vihar.
‘‘Oh God, why do you have to talk of the riots again? He is gone. They killed him in front of my eyes. I have been living with this. Why is everyone going back to 1984 again today,’’ she says wiping her tears.
Caressing a black and white portrait of a young turbaned man, Ajeet breaks down ‘‘Look at him. My son, Saudagar. He was just 28 then. They pulled him out of our house near Nand Nagri and kept hitting him with iron rods. He kept screaming out to me to help him. I tried but they hit me and pushed me to the floor. They sprinkled petrol all over him but ran out of match sticks after having put our house on fire. But why are we talking about all this again?’’ she asks, clinging on to her daughter Parvinder sitting at the edge of the creaky bed.
‘‘The Nanavati Commission report has been tabled in the Parliament today mamma. The guilty have all been let off. Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar and H K L Bhagat are all free. The government has finally given us justice,’’ says Parvinder clasping her mother’s hands.
‘‘I don’t understand which commission you are talking about. So many commissions have been set up but what have we got? Can they bring back my son? My soul can only rest in peace if the guilty are punished,’’ quips Ajeet, probably one of the oldest survivors of the ’84 riots in Tilak Vihar.
By then, a mob of over hundred people had gathered in front of the Tilak Nagar Police Post shouting slogans against the Congress government.
‘‘What more proof do you want? Are 5,000 people lying? We had been pinning our hopes on August 8. From the morning we have been hooked to TV and this’s what we get after waiting for 20 long years? We’ll forgive the government only if the guilty are punished. Nahin to, khun ka khun,’’ says Thakir Kaur, adhyaksh of the Widow Jatha. Chanting Jo bole so Nihal, a group of angry youngsters come running out of a narrow bylane holding huge paintings of the 1984 riots.
‘‘These are not paintings but direct representation of what we have seen with our own eyes. Politicians came down and directed the murderers to butcher the Sikhs. We have seen it all. And now they are pleading innocence on television and saying that on the day of the carnage they were not in Delhi. We’ll protest in front of Parliament. Let them kill us. As it is we are living carcasses,’’ says Joginder Singh who lost 10 of his family members.