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A Reporter's Diary

Reporter Rahul Bedi has seen it all, and is a frustrated man today. back in 1984, he was working with The Indian Express. In 23 years, most memories would fade. But not the images of what happened in the four days of November, 1984. Bedi's vivid account of the Trilokpuri incident is being reproduced elsewhere in this edition. He terms the massacre of the Sikhs in Block 32 of Trilokpuri as "the most calculated, bloody and horrible massacre that took place 36 hours after Mrs Gandhi was killed."

"About 320 people were massacred in the confines of a small gully about 300-400 yards long. There were houses on either side and the street was littered with bodies," he recalls.

It was later that reporters like Bedi discovered that the mayhem was no act of madness of the mob, but a calculated massacre. Once he saw the law machinbery was not moving, Bedi took to filing PILs, but he had not bargained for the labyrinthine justice system that does not work for the minorities. Bedi was to later cover the Gujarat riots of 2002, but did not rush in with PILs against policemen. "I have become cynical over the years." "Twenty years later we are a more cynical people. Killing, riots, sectarian violence have no meaning to us."

31 October, 2007
 

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