Indira Gandhi walked through the garden of her official residence in New Delhi on the morning of 31 October 1984, heading to an interview, when two of her own bodyguards turned their weapons on her. Beant Singh and Satwant Singh, both Sikh members of her personal security detail, shot her repeatedly at close range. She died within hours.
The killing was revenge. Five months earlier, Gandhi had ordered the army into the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism’s holiest site, to clear out militants sheltering inside; hundreds died in the operation, and many Sikhs saw it as a desecration. Beant Singh was shot dead by other guards moments after the attack; Satwant Singh was captured, tried and later hanged. In the days that followed, mobs across India killed thousands of Sikhs in revenge riots that the assassination had set in motion.
