The home ministry has asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to inquire into the whereabouts of manuscripts and books alleged to be missing from the Golden Temple in Amritsar [Images] after Operation Bluestar.

There have been allegations that books or manuscripts, which the army reportedly removed during the Operation, have not been restored to the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal informed the Lok Sabha on Tuesday in a written statement.

He said 4,000 documents, books or files and gold or gold ornaments, silver or silver ornaments, precious stones, currency, coins, etc, were recovered by a central agency during the operation.

All the articles and documents were handed over either to the SGPC or to the government of Punjab except a few documents, which were objectionable and thus destroyed, and a few others filed in the court, the minister said.

In the 1980s, Punjab was witness to a number of killings by Sikh extremists fighting for an independent country. In 1984, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a preacher-turned-separatist, ran his terrorist campaign from the confines of the Golden Temple.

Former prime minister Indira Gandhi [Images] then ordered the Indian Army to flush the terrorists out of the Golden Temple complex. This was the army's most controversial action, which was known as Operation Bluestar.

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