'The charred and hacked remains of the dead eloquently described a horrible and heart-rending tragedy. Women, children and a handful of [men], hiding under dead bodies. were rescued by reporters . They were emotionless. They had no tears to shed. A three-year old girl, stepping over the bodies of her father, three brothers and countless others lying in the street, clung helplessly to a reporter, pleading for help. "Please take me home," she said..' -Newspaper report form Trilokpuri, East Delhi, Nov 3, 1984, where more than 350 Sikhs were gorily killed in the preceding 36 hours. Yet, a police officer told the reporters filing the story, "Nobody has been killed in Trilokpuri". Shortly thereafter, a Sikh youth, his stomach slashed, collapsed in their arms.

The contrast between reality and the official version of the horrific massacre that followed the killing of Indira Gandhi by a Sikh guard could not have been starker. As organized violence raged through bustee after poor bustee and colony after middle class colony of Delhi, the police stood by and watched. Worse, in many cases, they participated in the bloody carnage and looting. The higher authorities had enough warning of trouble within a few hours of Indira Gandhi's assassination on October 31, but did nothing to prevent it.

This writer had just flown into Delhi from Bombay that morning and witnessed the events from a vantage point. By the early afternoon, tension was palpable in the air. False and malicious rumors flew thick and fast about how "thousands of Sikhs" had celebrated the assassination by distributing sweets. "They must be taught a lesson", it was whispered. President Zail Singh's car was stoned as he left the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences.

By the evening, systematic killing and arson had begun-at the behest of Congress leaders, who mobilized mobs crying for "revenge". Columns of smoke rose all over the city. Cars and two- and three-wheelers were stopped to check the identity of the passengers. All bearded men were threatened. Soon, Sikh truckers started being "necklaced": lorry tyres containing kerosene were hung around their necks and they were burnt alive. According to official accounts, as many as 2,733 people were killed in the worst orgy of communal violence in Independent India, barring Gujarat.

Twenty-one years and nine enquiry commissions later, the perpetrators of the carnage have still not been brought to book. Not a single politician or policeman has been convicted. A small fraction (only 13 people) of the thousands who killed, raped and burned have been held guilty. All hopes that the Nanavati Commission, appointed five years ago to inquire into the orgy of killing, rape and pillage, would spur adequate corrective action now stand belied. The government's Action Taken Report (ATR), tabled six months after the Commission submitted its own report, is yet another black mark in this prolonged cover-up of the state's collusion with premeditated killings and its repeated betrayal of the victims.

The Nanavati report is far from perfect, indeed shoddy in parts. It recognizes that the violence was "systematic", "organized", and conducted under "instructions", but fails to fix culpability, especially at the apex level. The judge was working within the narrow confines of the evidence presented to him and did not demand fresh investigations. Evidence in cases of serious communal violence can often be manipulated: testimonies can be withdrawn or changed. Key witnesses can be bribed or bludgeoned into changing their statements to weaken the case against powerful individuals. This is how those who instigated the violence to "teach the Sikh community a lesson" tried to escape the law's net.

The role of Congress politicians in plotting and organizing the carnage has been well-documented. They took their cue from the moral ambiguity of Rajiv Gandhi who infamously said: "When a big tree falls, the earth shakes." The coterie around Rajiv Gandhi, including Messrs Jagdish Tytler, H.K.L. Bhagat, Sajjan Kumar, Arun Nehru and Kamal Nath instigated or condoned a campaign of mayhem and killing. Some of this was carefully recorded by citizens' groups like Nagarik Ekta Manch, which interviewed thousands of victims' families and eyewitnesses and produced a booklet entitled "Who Are the Guilty?" It's truly regrettable that nine official commissions couldn't achieve even this much despite all the authority, time and resources at their command.

Justice Nanavati, for incomprehensible reasons, found the Delhi authorities collectively guilty, but individually innocent-a contradiction in terms. He also held that top Delhi administration officials, including Lt Governor P.G. Gavai and Police Commissioner S.C. Tandon, should not be prosecuted because they have retired. This makes no sense. You can't accuse the police of "colossal failure" to maintain law and order and of "collusion" and "ineffectiveness" in stopping the looting and killing-and yet let them off the hook. Mr Tandon may have retired, but he is liable for actions committed while holding a high office. As for Mr Gavai, he took his orders from the Union home ministry, as the Lt Governor of any Union Territory must. He seems to have been made a scapegoat.

It's recorded that Mr Gavai ordered Mr Tandon to call in the Army in the morning of November 1. However, the Army arrived in all six police districts of Delhi only on November 3, by which time hundreds of lives had been lost. Mr Gavai now says even Chief of Army Staff Arun Vaidya was indifferent when he asked him about the delay in deployment. Gen Vaidya said: "These things take time." And Home Minister Narasimha Rao was worse. He was only interested in protecting his friends; and he "hid like a rat" for three days after the violence broke out. Clearly, there was no political will to stop the violence, and later, to punish its perpetrators. The Congress party is also trying to pretend that only "local-level" leaders had a hand in instigating the violence. This simply won't do.

Even more disgracefully, the Centre failed to commit itself to taking action even where the Nanavati report warrants it. It's only under the Left's and his UPA allies' pressure that Dr Manmohan Singh asked Mr Tytler to resign, and Mr Sajjan Kumar too made his inglorious exit. But there was "credible evidence" that he "very probably" organised anti-Sikh attacks. The government originally tried to dilute the observation as amounting to "probabilistic" evidence. But all criminal cases are registered on probabilistic evidence! It's only conviction that needs proof beyond doubt. Similarly, the ATR rules out prosecuting Mr Bhagat because of his poor health and Mr Kamal Nath because of a changed affidavit by a key witness. Poor health can justify a lighter sentence, but not the absence of prosecution.

Thus, Chilean dictator Pinochet is being tried today for his horrendous crimes of the 1970s and 1980s-despite his advanced age. Similarly, it's for a trial court to evaluate the worth of the evidence against Mr Nath. But the ATR drops their prosecution on flimsy, unconvincing grounds. This is a travesty of justice. Not only will it alienate most Sikhs; it will horrify the public at large and announce to the world that impunity for grave crimes is the rule in India: the powerful cannot be brought to book; the rich rarely go to jail. The law is only applied against the underprivileged and powerless. The UPA must not vacillate over fulfilling its "solemn promise" to pursue investigations against all specific individuals named by Mr Nanavati. It must formally charge them and rehabilitate the victims. It must set up special courts to try all the accused who figure in the reports of earlier commissions, including 72 policemen.

A higher principle is involved here. If India is to live up to the great democratic aspirations of its people, it must establish and affirm the rule of law-systematically, painstakingly and impartially. This is a precondition for democracy and political legitimacy. The anti-Sikh pogrom presents a special challenge-and an opportunity to do justice to the victims of a gruesome massacre by applying the law to the powerful people who caused it. In a sense, taking prompt and serious action on the Nanavati report will be a prelude to the Ultimate Test the nation faces: namely, denying impunity to the perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Gujarat. The Gujarat pogrom was even greater in scale and brutality than the Delhi carnage, especially in the bestial quality of the killings and the sexual violence. It was also more directly instigated by the state. The global public has not forgotten what happened in Gujarat and who was responsible for it.

India's claim to high stature in the world does not lie in a Security Council seat or in nuclear weapons, and not even in economic might. It lies in democracy and pluralism. This is where our people's interests and their greatest achievements are also located. That claim will be reduced to a farce if heinous mass-level crimes and barbaric forms of collective victimization go unpunished. That would be a tragedy not just for Delhi's Sikhs or Gujarat's Muslims, but for all Indian citizens.