Forty-two years on, the wounds of the 1984 Sikh massacre have not fully healed — but Union Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri stood with survivors on Tuesday, 10 November 2026, to mark the anniversary, declaring that the grief of families who watched loved ones killed before their eyes 'cannot be expressed in words.'

Puri's post, shared in Hindi, opens with raw acknowledgement: 'जिन परिवारों ने अपने प्रियजनों को अपनी आँखों के सामने बेरहमी से खो दिया' — 'the families who lost their loved ones brutally before their very eyes.' He writes that the anguish of that horrific tragedy is still visible in survivors' eyes today, and stresses that remembering the 1984 Sikh genocide is essential 'so that such inhuman violence never occurs anywhere in the world again.'

From Grief to Resilience: What Puri Witnessed

The minister described a dialogue session with victim families, sharing that many survivors have risen above their ordeals and are now living with dignity — advancing in their professional fields and achieving new milestones. He called this a testament to their 'indomitable courage, self-confidence, and never-give-up spirit.' The post is accompanied by a video of those conversations.

Puri credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the efforts of the central government with kindling 'new hope' in the lives of many affected families. The post tags senior political and civic figures including lawyer-activist HS Phoolka, who has spent decades pursuing legal justice and compensation for 1984 riot victims through the courts.

Four Decades of Inquiry and Incomplete Accountability

The 1984 anti-Sikh riots erupted across India — most lethally in Delhi — in the days following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in October 1984. Thousands of Sikhs were killed in coordinated mob violence. The Nanavati Commission, constituted in 2000, is among the most prominent of multiple inquiry bodies that examined the killings and recommended relief measures. Central governments have periodically revised compensation packages for victim families over the intervening decades.

BJP leaders have consistently highlighted rehabilitation efforts under the current administration when marking the November anniversary, framing welfare schemes and survivor engagement as a contrast to what they characterise as decades of neglect under earlier governments. The annual commemoration has become a moment of both mourning and political reckoning.

HS Phoolka and the Long Road to Justice

The tagging of HS Phoolka — a lawyer and activist who has represented riot victims in court for years — signals that the gathering drew figures from across the survivor-support ecosystem, not only political circles. Phoolka's sustained legal work has resulted in convictions in select cases and kept public pressure on the question of accountability alive well into the 2020s.

For the families who attended Tuesday's dialogue, the ministerial meeting is one more step in a journey that spans four decades — a journey marked equally by institutional failures and by the quiet, fierce resilience Puri described in his post. The fight for full justice, and the work of rebuilding lives, continues.