Bharpur Singh was thirty-two-year-old at the time of the Partition, a horrific time that prompted the greatest mass migration in India's history.
"It was one of the saddest moments of my life. I saw brutal killings, women being raped with people showing no remorse for humanity,” he said in an interview recorded with SBS Punjabi in 2018.
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Remembering Partition: An Australian recalls stories of horror and humanity from 1947
SBS Punjabi
15/08/201921:52
Mr Singh had witnessed communal riots that broke after the India-Pakistan line was drawn based on religious grounds in 1947.
“It was a very shameful and disgraceful period of Indian history. It was total chaos. Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were killing and looting each other," he said.
“The religious fanatic groups were mainly responsible for the brutal killings. The mobs bragged about their associations with Muslim League and Hindu hardliner RSS group."
Mr Singh and his family had to flee to India from newly-formed Pakistan in August 1947.
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“On the journey, we saw dead lying in ditches along the road and floating in the canals. We somehow reached Amritsar, which was again a land of chaos and the roads were full of rioters," he recalled.
“I always found it difficult to remember those scenes which often fill me with profound grief and sadness."
Mr Singh said that later in the newspapers he read that more than 500,000 people were brutally killed and more than 1.4 crore were displaced during this horrific time.
“These memories are still vivid. I don’t want to remember this horrific time but this is something that would not fade away until my last breath,” he said.
The Singh family later moved to Australia after suffering heavy losses in the 1984 Sikh Massacre.
