Assassination of Indira Gandhi

Gandhi's assassination led to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots which were instigated by nationalist mobs and political figures from the Indian National Congress (INC), Indira Gandhi's party, who orchestrated pogroms against Sikh populations throughout India. Four days of mob violence resulted in the destruction of 40 historic gurdwaras and other important Sikh holy sites. Official Indian government figures put the death toll at 3,350, while other sources have claimed that between 8,000 and over 16,000 Sikhs were killed.

Operation Blue Star

Operation Blue Star was a large Indian military operation carried out between 1 and 8 June 1984, ordered by Indira Gandhi to remove leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his militant Sikh followers from the buildings of the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar.

229 armed Sikh militants were killed inside the Golden Temple complex during the operation, which also led to at least 554 civilian deaths. 717 dead bodies were found inside Golden temple complex, 501 civilians and 216 militants killed between 3 and 9 June. Eleven additional people were killed on 1 June by shooting between the Central Reserve Police Force and militants according to then Amritsar District Commissioner Ramesh Inder Singh. Regarding Indian Army personnel deaths, Lt. Gen. Prem Nath Hoon, who became General commanding officer of Western Command (1986-87), revealed that 336 Indian Army and security forces personnel died in the operation fighting with entrenched militants led by former Major General Shabeg Singh. In sum, 1119 to 1130 total people died inside the Golden Temple complex and within Amritsar City during the operation.

The Government of India's 1984 White Paper on Operation Blue Star reported that 83 Indian Army personnel were killed and 249 were wounded during the operation. Some contemporary journalistic accounts, however, suggested higher casualties. Journalist Shekhar Gupta, who was present in Amritsar during the operation, stated that 136 army personnel were killed and around 220 injured, describing it as “the highest casualties suffered by our armed forces in a domestic operation in 24 hours.” In sum, 919 to 930 total people died inside the Golden Temple complex and within Amritsar City during the operation.

Other sources estimate around 5,000 civilian and 700 military personnel deaths in around the complex and in Amritsar during the operation. The Operation also caused serious damage to two of the holiest Sikh shrines, the Golden Temple and Akal Takht, as well as the destruction of the Sikh Reference Library.

The perceived threat to Gandhi's life increased after the operation. Accordingly, Sikhs were removed from her personal bodyguard detail by the Intelligence Bureau for fear of assassination. Gandhi feared that this would reinforce her anti-Sikh image among the public, however, she ordered the Delhi Police to reinstate her Sikh bodyguards, including Beant Singh, reportedly her personal favourite.

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Assassination

Attack

At about 9:20 a.m. Indian Standard Time on 31 October 1984, Gandhi was on her way to be interviewed by British actor Peter Ustinov, who was filming a documentary for Irish television. She was accompanied by her personal secretary R. K. Dhawan, personal security officer Rameshwar Dayal, and Constable Narayan Singh. She was walking through the garden of the Prime Minister's Residence at No. 1 Safdarjung Road in New Delhi towards the neighbouring 1 Akbar Road office. Gandhi was not wearing her bulletproof vest that day, which she had been advised to wear at all times after Operation Blue Star.

Gandhi passed a wicket gate guarded by Constable Satwant and Sub-Inspector Beant Singh, and the two men opened fire. Beant fired three rounds into her abdomen from his .38 (9.7 mm) revolver; then Satwant fired 30 rounds from his Sterling sub-machine gun after she had said “ouch” and fallen to the ground. Both men then threw down their weapons and Beant said, "I have done what I had to do. You do what you want to do." In the next six minutes, Border Police officers Tarsem Singh Jamwal and Ram Saran captured and killed Beant, while Satwant was arrested by Gandhi's other bodyguards along with an accomplice trying to escape; he was seriously wounded. Satwant Singh was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for killing Gandhi. He was hanged in 1989, along with accomplice Kehar Singh.

Salma Sultan gave the first news of the assassination of Gandhi on Doordarshan's evening news on 31 October 1984, more than ten hours after she was killed. It is alleged by the Indian government that Gandhi's secretary R. K. Dhawan overruled intelligence and security officials who had ordered the removal of policemen as a security threat, including her assassins.

Beant was one of Gandhi's favourite guards, whom she had known for ten years. Because he was a Sikh, he had been taken off her staff after Operation Blue Star, yet Gandhi had made sure that he was reinstated. Satwant was 22 years old at the time of the assassination, and had been assigned to Gandhi's guard just five months earlier.

Declared death

Gandhi was taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi (AIIMS) at 9:30 a.m. AIIMS director-designate Sneh Bhargava wrote that though Gandhi was clinically dead upon arrival, doctors had to keep up appearances and continue to operate on her until her son Rajiv Gandhi could be sworn in as prime minister. She was declared dead at 2:20 p.m. The postmortem examination was conducted by a team of doctors headed by Tirath Das Dogra, who stated that 30 bullets had struck Gandhi from a Sterling sub-machine gun and a revolver. The assailants had fired 33 bullets at her, of which 30 had hit; 23 had passed through her body, while seven remained inside. Dogra extracted bullets to establish the identity of the weapons and to correlate each weapon with the bullets recovered by ballistic examination. The bullets were matched to the weapons at CFSL Delhi.

National mourning

The Indian government ordered a national mourning from 1 to 12 November with flags half-masted and cancelled entertainment and cultural events and closed offices for several days. Tanzania declared seven days of mourning, Uganda five, and Cuba four. Pakistan, Vietnam, Brazil, Nicaragua and Gabon each declared three days of mourning. Portugal declared two days of mourning, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Mongolian People's Republic and Mauritius declared a day of national mourning.

Funeral

Gandhi's body was taken in a gun carriage through Delhi roads on the morning of 1 November to Teen Murti Bhavan, where her father stayed and where she lay in state. She was cremated with full state honours on 3 November near Raj Ghat, a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, at an area named Shakti Sthal. Her elder son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, lit the pyre.

Among the foreign dignitaries who attended the state funeral were:

Aftermath

Over the next four days, 8,000 Sikhs were killed in retaliatory violence. Other sources record well over 25,000 deaths of Sikhs.

The Justice Thakkar Commission of Inquiry, headed by Justice Manharlal Pranlal Thakkar, set up to probe Gandhi's assassination, recommended a separate probe for the conspiracy angle behind the assassination. The Thakkar Report stated that the "needle of suspicion" pointed at R. K. Dhawan for complicity in the conspiracy.

Satwant Singh and co-conspirator Kehar Singh were sentenced to death. Both were executed on 6 January 1989.

A Punjabi movie titled Kaum De Heere (Gems of the Community) highlighting the roles/lives of the two guards that assassinated Indira Gandhi was set to be released on 22 August 2014, but was banned by the Indian government for five years.