Indira Gandhi

Shot on 31 October 1984 in her Delhi garden by her own Sikh bodyguards Beant Singh and Satwant Singh; the prime minister died hours after the attack in reprisal for Operation Blue Star.

Overview

Gandhi, daughter of Nehru and prime minister for most of the years since 1966, had ordered the army into the Golden Temple in June 1984 to remove armed Sikh militants led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, wounding the faith holiest shrine. On the morning after a filmed interview in which she dismissed threats to her life from her Sikh guards, her two bodyguards fired on her as she crossed the garden; she died that afternoon in hospital. Beant Singh was shot dead at the scene, Satwant Singh was convicted and hanged in 1989. The murder unleashed the Delhi anti-Sikh riots with thousands killed by Congress-led mobs, a wound three decades of commissions and one 2018 conviction have barely closed. Her son Rajiv inherited the premiership within hours; her cremation site remains a place of political pilgrimage.