Operation Blue Star architect Lt Gen KS Brar rubbishes reports of UK help

Rubbishing the reports hinting at British help to India in planning the Operation Bluestar, former Lieutenant General Kuldeep Singh Brar has said that the anti-Sikh raid was planned and executed entirely by the Indian Army.

Zee Media Bureau New Delhi: Rubbishing the reports hinting at British help to India in planning the Operation Bluestar, former Lieutenant General Kuldeep Singh Brar has said that the anti-Sikh raid on the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984 was planned and executed entirely by the commanders of Indian Army. Speaking exclusively to an international news channel, Lt Gen Brar, who was in-charge of Indian Army`s Operation Bluestar claimed that there was no question of Indian Army getting any foreign help in the raid on the Golden Temple to evict dissident Sikhs. "There was no question of our getting help or advice from any foreign country - and certainly not from Britain -(these allegations of Thatcher administration helping India) appear to be like fiction," Brar told an international news channel. The ghost of 1984 ant-Sikh raid was resurrected on Tuesday when a British Labour Party MP Tom Watson reportedly said he had witnessed "top secret papers from Mrs Thatcher authorising Special Air Services (SAS) to work with the Indian government". The two bombshell letters dated Feb 6 and Feb 23 1984, the details of which were published on the blog “Stop Deportations” triggered the UK government to order a probe into the matter.

As published on the blog, top UK secret files reveal the details of a letter dated Feb 6 1984 that talked about "Indian request for advice on plans for the removal of dissident Sikhs from the Golden Temple". The letter further states that Margaret Thatcher, the PM at that time, was "content that the foreign secretary should proceed as he proposes". Doubting the authenticity of the letters cited by the British MP, the former general Brar, one of the architects of the ant-Sikh Operation Bluestar, said that he was “ dumbfounded” by the revelations. "I am and totally amazed... I do not believe that these documents could be authentic,” he told the international news channel. "As far as I am concerned the operation was planned and executed entirely by military commanders of the Indian Army,” he added. The Operation Blue Star was ordered by the then Indian PM Indira Gandhi to evict dissident Sikhs and their leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who demanded a separate state of Khalistan. The operation was carried out in June 1984, when thousands of troops raided the Golden Temple in Amritsar, attacking the Sikh national shrine with tanks and helicopter gunships. The Operation Blue Star is said to have killed over thousands of Sikhs, but according to the Indian government only 400 had been killed. Reacting to the reports, the BJP leader and Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said that the Indian Government should come out with the truth regarding the Operation Bluestar. “It is about time that the Government of India decided to tell us the truth as to what the real facts were. This would enable the people of India to conclude whether ‘Operation Blue Star’ was a strategic miscalculation,”  wrote Jaitley.