My father couldn't get Rajiv Gandhi on phone during 1984 riots, Zail Singh's daughter says

CHANDIGARH: Former president Giani Zail Singh's daughter Dr Gurdeep Kaur has said that when anti-Sikh riots broke out in Delhi in 1984, her father made frantic calls to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to have the Army called in to control the mobs.

In an interview broadcast on a Punjabi TV channel on Monday, Dr Kaur said the then supreme commander of the armed forces had felt "pain and helplessness" since he could not establish contact with then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and home minister P V Narasimha Rao, and had to instead send out those close to him to try and use their influence to put an end to the massacre of Sikhs.

"I wouldn't be able to explain why he couldn't reach the PMO, but he kept trying the entire night," Dr Kaur told the channel, adding that Operation Bluestar and the Sikh riots were two traumatic events of Singh's life. She said her father's own convoy was attacked.

Dr Kaur told the channel that Singh was against sending in the Army to flush out militants from the Golden Temple in Amritsar. "He was against even allowing police to enter the Harmandar Sahib," she said. "He was kept in the dark about the operation and this had left him shattered."