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Officer who identified Sant Bhindranwale's body
is dead
WSN Network
 Jalandhar: Apar Singh Bajwa (69), a
retired IPS officer, whose testimony had played a crucial role in
settling the controversy about the death of Sant Jarnail Singh
Bhindrawale during Operation Bluestar, has died.
Bajwa, who retired as superintendent of police, was a DSP of Punjab
Police in Amritsar during the army operation in 1984 and was one of
the few officers of Punjab Police, who could go inside the Golden
Temple Complex.
He was probably the only officer who on one hand got President’s
police medal for bravery during his service and on the other Damdami
Taksal, once headed by Bhindrawale, also decided to honour him.
Bajwa consistently maintained that the army had taken away
considerable stuff from the Sikh Reference Library and wanted that
it be returned to the Sikhs.
Bajwa was diagnosed with cancer around a year back and he breathed
his last in Amritsar on Saturday where was cremated with state
honours.
He is survived by his wife, a son and three daughters.
Bajwa’s eyewitness account about
identification of Bhindranwale’s body and about his cremation was
one of the major evidences before which Taksal leadership had to
finally accept the truth.
Recalling the turbulent traumatic days of the summer of 1984, Bajwa
had said: "The Army officers in-charge ordered me to go home and I
remained there until the morning of June 6 when I was summoned early
in the morning. When I reached the kotwali [police station] near the
temple, I saw the dead bodies of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale,
Gen. Shabeg Singh, Thiara Singh and Amrik Singh lying there...I was
asked to identify the bodies because I was familiar with all the
dead men having often interacted with them as part of my duties as a
police officer. The Army then requested me to arrange the
cremations. We performed these, according to Sikh rites, at the
nearby Gurudwara Shaheedan...A large majority of those who died
inside the Golden Temple during Operation Bluestar were common
devotees who had come to the shrine on June 3 on the occasion of the
fifth Guru’s Martyrdom Day...Apart from Bhindranwale’s armed
followers, I counted a little over 800 dead bodies inside the temple
complex. My men and I were also tasked with clearing and cremating
these bodies. Army and municipal officials helped transport them to
the local cremation ground. While many innocents were killed in the
crossfire between the Army and the militants, it is also true that
the soldiers deliberately gunned down several devotees. You see they
actually believed that anyone inside the temple was the ‘enemy.’ The
soldiers had no notion of how they should tackle an unprecedented
situation like the one that had developed inside the Golden Temple."
Bajwa was also on record as saying that no attempt was ever made to
identify the civilians killed. "This would have only been possible
if the Army had involved the state police. But then at that time the
soldiers were in a hurry to mop up and quickly withdraw from the
temple complex. It was because of this haste that scores of
distraught families not only lost their loved ones but spent months
in a futile search for their dead relatives."
11 July, 2007
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