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General Vaidya assassination: Retired police inspector Bharat Nimbalkar recalls how the killers were arrested
Nimbalkar’s senior police duty officer tried to put him (Pawar) off, but Nimbalkar sensed something fishy and decided to investigate further
Thirty-eight years after the assassination of General Arunkumar Shridhar Vaidya on August 10, 1986, retired police inspector Bharat Nimbalkar shares account of the arrest of two assassins -Harjinder Singh alias Jinda and Sukhdev Singh and Sukha’s aide Nirmal Singh alias Nima.
“It was Ganesh Chaturthi on that day when a drunk man named Bajrang Pawar, a telephone lineman, approached the Pimpri police, claiming to have seen two men with weapons,” said Nimbalkar.
Nimbalkar’s senior police duty officer tried to put him (Pawar) off, but Nimbalkar sensed something fishy and decided to investigate further.
“He told us that the duo was on a bike travelling from Pune to Mumbai and overtook the wrong lane, dashed against a tempo and fell. The rider was Sukha, and the person who fell was Nima, whose pistol also fell on the road. People went to help them, but he threatened them, after which all eyewitnesses, including Pawar, left the spot,” Nimbalkar said.
“We took Pawar to verify those men and spotted them near Vishal Talkies in Pimpri. We tried to get hold of Nima while Sukha pushed and escaped. I gave him a hot chase, and he ran three to four hundred meters. He jumped in an abandoned company compound, and I went from the gate. He opened a round of fire at me, but I caught hold of him. The round got misfired, and the bullet got stuck in the firearm, and I was saved in the nick of time. I took the pistol and started beating him. Don’t beat me, he said, it is I who killed General Vaidya,” said Nimbalkar.
“Sukha had two pistols, and Nima had one revolver, which we recovered from them. We brought them to the police station, and at that time, Sukha raised “Khalistan Zindabad” slogans.
The terrorists were staying in a bungalow in Salunke Vihar. After the assassination of Gen Vaidya, they fled to Mumbai, from there to Punjab, then Madhya Pradesh and back to Pune.
General Vaidya served as the 12th Chief of the Army Staff from 1983 to 1986 and was assassinated in August 1986, for his role in Operation Blue Star in 1984.
On August 10, 1986, General Vaidya was shot dead on Rajendrasinhji Marg in Pune. A year later, Jinda was nabbed from Delhi.
They were sentenced to death on October 21, 1989, and hanged at Yerwada jail on October 9, 1992.
General Vaidya was shot dead by the Sikh militants as vengeance for his role in Operation Blue Star. Between June 1 and June 10, 1984, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had ordered an operation to flush out terrorists from Amritsar. Operation Blue Star was the code name given for the military action which was carried out to remove Khalistan terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his band of armed followers from the Harminder Sahib complex in Amritsar.
