Duration: 00:05:05

(00:14:29): Harpal Singh: When your husband left home on his bicycle…

Pritam Kaur: He didn’t take anything along…

Harpal Singh: Did the bicycle belong to someone else?

Pritam Kaur: He didn’t take anything along. The bicycle belonged to a Muslim neighbour. My son brought the bicycle back. He came back and told me, ‘Mommy, Daddy was waylaid by some men near the crossing. So, Daddy told me to go back. He said, I’ll come back if I survive, else, you take care of your mother and brothers’. I don’t know what happened after that. So later when my daughters went to the mortuary at Raghubir Nagar and looked at the dead bodies, my elder daughter recognized her father from his feet. His face was burnt, so there was no way to recognize him from the face. His clothes were also burnt. There was another Sikh there. She told him that it was her father’s dead body. She had followed his bicycle into the mortuary. He forbid her from saying anything. He told her that there was a cop standing nearby. He would shoot us. So it is best to leave quietly. Don’t turn back and look at your Daddy now. So she left the place and came away.

My daughter never returned to Sultanpuri. For two years, she didn’t even enter that colony. She didn’t want to go. Both sisters didn’t go there. Nor did my other children. We went off to Punjab. Came back from there. Even then they didn’t go to Sultanpuri. They said they were not going to go there because that colony took away the life of their father.

I sold that house in Sultanpuri, like, dirt cheap. Its sale was permitted by the government. I had the choice of selling it or returning it to the housing authority of the government. So I chose to dispose that house off and take this one for living in. A local non-profit here had advised me to sell that house and marry my daughter off as soon as possible. So I sold it for less than fifty thousand Rupees (US$ 671), I think. May be even less. And I married off my elder daughter. She was already 20 years old then. I married her off three years after the 1984 violence, in 1987. Harpal Singh: When your husband left home, did he talk to you? Did he say something? Did he tell you that he was going to Raghubir Nagar, and that he would come back?

Pritam Kaur: He said ‘if I survive, I’ll come back and I’m yours. Else, God will take care of me as well as you. He said if I survive, all of us will get back together again. But if I get into the hands of the mob, then I don’t know. There was a lot of violence taking place at that time. He had a kirpan (pocket dagger) on his person for self-defence, though, like all other Sikhs. He said I will try to save my life as far as possible. But his captors threw a tyre around his neck from the front, doused him with petrol and then set him on fire. That’s how they killed all the Sikh men. They didn’t kill them with knives or daggers. Else, do you think the Sikhs could die that easily without a fight? They are well-built, have big hearts, and are brave. My husband was highly skilled in four crafts. He was educated. He was a nice man. He had a status in the society we lived in. He was the local secretary and handled the affairs of four neighbourhood colonies. There was a large signboard outside our house which had his name and title. The government had provided it. In fact, it was installed on the orders of Mrs Indira Gandhi. That is why he had to leave the house. Everyone knew about him and his whereabouts. Otherwise he wasn’t going to leave. There was another Sikh man, Raj Singh. He was the local president of the colony. He lived in ‘D’ Block. The mob killed him first. Then they set out for my husband. That’s why he had to leave. But he died because he left the house, because he feared an assault. He died because the mob got him. He thought, may be, he would survive if he left. But luck was not on his side. He couldn’t save his life. We didn’t have any big conversation before he left.

Son, what all do I share with you about what I have gone through? I console myself by looking at his photograph. I cry my heart out. I reassure myself and carry on. (00:19:28)