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| Image from Encyclopaedia Britannica |
On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated.
Indira Gandhi was India's first female prime minister. She served three terms from 1966 to 1977, and a fourth from 1980 to her death in 1984. As part of her foreign policy, Indira Gandhi encouraged Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka, but domestically refused to grant full autonomy to Sikhs in the Punjab region. In June 1984, Operation Blue Star commenced, in which the Indian military launched an assault on the Sikh Golden Temple at Amritsar in an attempt to squash the efforts of separatist extremists.
On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi was shot several times by Beant Singh and Satwant Singh, two Sikh guards in the prime minister's inner circle. Beant fired the first three shots into Gandhi's abdomen, then Satwant unloaded a machine gun into her chest, heart, and body. Although the prime minister was likely already dead when she arrived at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital, the doctors tried to save her and gave her several bottles of blood to recover what she lost.
Beant Singh was shot and died while trying to escape his captors, and Satwant Singh was hanged on January 6, 1989. The death of Indira Gandhi sparked a wave of anti-Sikh sentiment throughout India, causing several thousand individuals to be beaten and killed.
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