“It was a wave of outsiders that charged into Raj Nagar on that unfortunate day 34 years back. I have been a resident of Raj Nagar for over 40 years and apart form that one day, it has been a very peaceful place to live,” said Tika Singh, recalling the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in the Capital.
Senior Congress leader Sajjan Kumar was on Monday convicted for killing five members of a family in the colony on November 1, 1984.
The owner of a grocery store in Raj Nagar located in Palam, Mr. Singh said that post the riots there has never been any communal flare-up and the area has welcomed people from all over the country to live in. “Back in those days, we did not even bother to have locks on our doors because it was such a safe place to live. We were not scared of thieves, forget about worrying about someone coming in to kill a person,” he said.
Another resident of the colony, Rakesh Kumar, who was present during the riots in 1984, said: “There are not many families left in Raj Nagar that had witnessed the riots as the colony has grown so much and most of the residents are new. I know of many families that left Delhi and went to Punjab after the riots, but there was no exodus as such. It has always been peaceful.”
For most of the residents of the area, it was life as usual with very few even aware that it was in their colony that five persons were killed and a Congress leader had been convicted for it.
