Assassination of Indira Gandhi

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Assassination of Indira Gandhi
Part of the Insurgency in Punjab, India
File:PathOfMartyrdom.JPG
The spot where Gandhi was shot down is marked by a glass opening in the crystal pathway at the Indira Gandhi Memorial
Location Prime Minister residence, Safdarjung Road, New Delhi
Date 31 October 1984
9:30 a.m.
Attack type
 Assassination
Weapons .38 (9.1 mm) revolver and Sterling submachine gun
Victim Indira Gandhi
Assailants Satwant Singh and Beant Singh
Memorial at the place of assassination, Safdarjung Road, New Delhi

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Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated at 9:30 a.m. on 31 October 1984 at her residence in Safdarjung Road, New Delhi. She was killed by her bodyguards[1] Satwant Singh and Beant Singh in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star, an Indian military action carried out between 1 and 8 June 1984 ordered by Indira Gandhi to remove Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers from the Golden Temple of Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, Punjab. The collateral damage included the death of many pilgrims, as well as damage to the Akal Takht.[2] The military action on the sacred temple was criticized both inside and outside India.[citation needed]

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 Harmandir Sahib complex in Amritsar, Punjab.[3] The Indian Army suffered around 83 casualties with 700 injuries, and 450–500 Sikh rebels were killed during the operation. The handling of the operation, damage to the holy shrine, and loss of military and civilian life on both sides led to widespread criticism of the Indian government.[citation needed]

The perceived threat to Gandhi's life increased after the operation.[4] Accordingly, Sikhs were removed from her personal bodyguard detail by the Intelligence Bureau for fear of assassination. Gandhi thought that this would reinforce her anti-Sikh image among the public, however, and she ordered the Delhi Police to reinstate her Sikh bodyguards,[5] including Beant Singh, who was reported to be her personal favorite.[6]

Assassination

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 Constable Narayan Singh, personal security officer Rameshwar Dayal and Gandhi's personal secretary, R. K. Dhawan.[7] She was walking through the garden of the Prime Minister's Residence at No. 1 Safdarjung Road in New Delhi towards the neighboring 1 Akbar Road office.[8]

Gandhi passed a wicket gate guarded by Satwant and Beant Singh, and the two men opened fire. Beant fired three rounds into her abdomen from his .38 (9.7 mm) revolver;[6] then Satwant fired 30 rounds from his Sterling sub-machine gun after she had fallen to the ground.[6] 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 and an accomplice trying to escape; he was seriously wounded.[9] Satwant Singh was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for killing Gandhi. He was hanged in 1989, along with accomplice Kehar Singh.[10]

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.[11][12] 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.[13]

Beant was one of Gandhi's favorite guards, whom she had known for ten years.[6] Because he was a Sikh, he had been taken off her staff after Operation Blue Star; however, Gandhi had made sure that he was reinstated.[14] Satwant was 22 years old at the time of the assassination, and had been assigned to Gandhi's guard just five months previously.[6]

Gandhi's blood-stained saree and her belongings at the time of her assassination, preserved at the Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum in New Delhi.

Gandhi was taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi at 9:30 a.m. Doctors operated on her. 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.

The Indian government ordered a national mourning from November 1 to November 12 with flags half-masted and canceled entertainment and cultural events and offices closed for several days.[15][16] Pakistan[17][18] declared three days of mourning and Bulgaria declared a day of national mourning.[19]

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.[8] She was cremated with full state honors 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:[20]

Country Dignitaries
 Algeria Abdelhamid Brahimi (Prime Minister)
 Australia Ninian Stephen (Governor-General)
Bob Hawke (Prime Minister)
 Bhutan Jigme Singye Wangchuck (King)
 Canada Brian Dickson (Chief Justice)
Joe Clark (Former Prime Minister and Secretary of State for External Affairs)
 China Yao Yilin (Vice-Premier)
 Czechoslovak Socialist Republic Lubomír Štrougal (Prime Minister)
 East Germany Horst Sindermann (President of the People's Chamber)
 Fiji Penaia Ganilau (Governor-General)
Kamisese Mara (Prime Minister)
 France Laurent Fabius (Prime Minister)
 Indonesia Umar Wirahadikusumah (Vice-President)
 Japan Yasuhiro Nakasone (Prime Minister)
 Jordan Prince Hassan bin Talal (Crown Prince)
 Kenya Mwai Kibaki (Vice President)
 Laos Souphanouvong (President)
Kaysone Phomvihane (Prime Minister)
 Liberia Harry Moniba (Vice President)
 Mauritius Anerood Jugnauth (Prime Minister)
 Mongolian People's Republic T. Ragchaa (First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers)
 Nauru Hammer DeRoburt (President)
   Nepal Lokendra Bahadur Chand (Prime Minister)
 New Zealand David Beattie (Governor-General)
David Lange (Prime Minister)
 North Korea Pak Song-chol (Vice-President)
 People's Republic of Bulgaria Todor Zhivkov (General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party)
 People's Republic of Kampuchea Heng Samrin (President of the Council of State)
Chan Sy (Prime Minister)
Template:Country data People's Republic of Mozambique Samora Machel (President)
 Poland Wojciech Jaruzelski (Prime Minister)
 Philippines Imelda Marcos (First Lady)
 South Korea Chae Mun-shik (Speaker of the National Assembly)
 USSR Nikolai Tikhonov (Chairman of the Council of Ministers)
 SFR Yugoslavia Veselin Đuranović (President)
 Syria Zuhair Masharqa (Vice President)
Farouk al-Sharaa (Foreign Minister)
 Tanzania Julius Nyerere (President)
 Uganda Milton Obote (President)
 United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher (Prime Minister)
Princess Royal (Representing Her Majesty The Queen)
 United States George Shultz (Secretary of State)[21][22]
 Vanuatu Ati George Sokomanu (President)
Walter Lini (Prime Minister)
 Vietnam Trường Chinh (President)
Phạm Văn Đồng (Prime Minister)
 Zambia Kenneth Kaunda (President)
 Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe (Prime Minister)

Aftermath

Over the next four days, 8,000 Sikhs were killed in retaliatory violence.[23]

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.[24]

Satwant Singh and alleged conspirator Kehar Singh were sentenced to death. Both were executed on 6 January 1989.[25]

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[26][27] for five years.[28]

See also

References

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  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Dr. Sangat Kr. Singh, The Sikhs in History, p. 393
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  19. ↑ Указ No. 3904 от 1 ноември 1984 г. Обн. ДВ. бр. 88 от 6 ноември 1984 г.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  27. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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