When a Tree Shook Delhi by Manoj Mitta & H.S. Phoolka

Author:Manoj Mitta & H.S. Phoolka
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9788174365989
Publisher: Roli Books Pvt. Ltd.
Published: 2013-12-18T18:30:00+00:00

Clubbing the Good with the Bad

While we were engaged in collecting affidavits for the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission, I had a bizarre encounter with the policeman in charge of the locality worst affected in the carnage, east Delhi’s Trilokpuri. Soor Veer Singh Tyagi was actually the station house officer of the Kalyanpuri police station, which then had jurisdiction over Trilokpuri as well. I got to meet Tyagi because while I was collecting affidavits from the riot victims, he too was doing the same, except that he was doing it for an entirely different purpose – to save his skin.

Tyagi was then under suspension. In a much publicized event, additional commissioner of police, Hukum Chand Jatav, was reported to have suspended Tyagi and booked him for criminal negligence on 2 November 1984, immediately after the massacre in Block 32 of Trilokpuri came to light. Jatav had apparently acted so decisively in the presence of press reporters.

Despite his suspension, Tyagi continued to wield enough clout to operate out of his old police station. I came to know this when some of the twenty-five Sikhs who had been arrested in Kalyanpuri on 1 November (oddly enough, for resisting rioters) approached me at the CJC’s office in August 1985 to file affidavits before the Misra Commission. They revealed to me that Tyagi had called them to the Kalyanpuri police station, and using the leverage of the rioting case in which they were being prosecuted, asked them to file affidavits in his favour, before the same commission. I sensed that this was a great opportunity for me to expose the conspiracy to present false evidence in favour of the guilty.

With the help of those victims from Kalyanpuri, I hit upon the idea of performing a sting operation on Tyagi. Accordingly, they told Tyagi that they were prepared to give affidavits in his favour, provided that he was willing to meet their lawyer and convince him about it. They made sure that they didn't give him my full name because I was known, and my name always appeared in the media as HS Phoolka. Expanding my initials, the victims gave my name to Tyagi as Harvinder Singh.

Desperate as he was to get the affidavits, Tyagi readily agreed to meet me. Accompanied by the victims, I went to the Kalyanpuri police station with a small tape-recorder hidden in my spectacle case, which was concealed in my breast pocket. The move was risky, more so because of the virulent anti-victim environment generated then by the powers that be. As a precaution, I took two of my team members, BPS Mangat and Commodore JMS Sood, into confidence and placed them outside the police station. It was planned that if anything untoward happened inside the police station, one of the victims would rush out and signal to Mangat and Sood, who would, in turn, alert CJC members such as Sorabjee and Lieutenant General Aurora.

Fortunately, such a contingency did not arise at all. My pretence of being the lawyer of those victims from Kalyanpuri was evidently convincing.

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