The UK is investigating newly declassified documents that show the Margaret Thatcher government colluded with India on the deadly raid on the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar in June, 1984.  Officially, 492 civilians were killed, although independent estimates claim as many as 5,000 lost their lives.

The British blog “Stop Deportations” published the documents, which it says were buried in a mass release of other papers made public on 1 January.  British government rules allow for the publication of government records after a period of 30 years.  They state that the UK’s elite special forces, the Special Air Service (SAS), had helped to draw up a plan to attack the building. 

One letter from then-PM Margaret Thatcher mentioned the “Indian request for advice on plans for the removal of dissident Sikhs from the Golden Temple,” and it added that Thatcher was “content that the foreign secretary should proceed as he proposes.”

Another said Thatcher agreed to help, sent a military officer to India to draw up the invasion plan, and it was approved by India’s Prime Minister at the time, Indira Gandhi.  It’s not certain that India actually followed the British plan.

Sikh separatists had for months occupied the grounds of the Golden Temple, the faith’s holiest shrine.  They demanded that an independent homeland called Khalistan be created in Punjab. 

The military operation to remove them was called Operation Blue Star.  It took several days and involved several locations.  It led directly to the Assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two of her Sikh bodyguards.