News started trickling in that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has been assassinated.
It was 31 October 1984; I was then working in ABP Group. I first got the news around 10.00 from my friend Sergio Scapagnini from Rome, Italy. I first thought he was asking a question, then it dawned that he was informing me. I did not believe him. I told him there was no such news. Being in a large publication group I assured him that we would have got the news.
On leaving the phone I was puzzled. Sergio is not someone to relay wrong news. Having connection with Alexandro Borgia he was always in the ‘know’. I went over to meet the Chief Editor, Aveek Sarkar and shared with him the piece of information. He said he has heard whispers but he was now sure. It is the Italian connection. News was much quicker on that part of the globe. He called up the Telephone Board and rattled a series of names nationally and internationally to be connected.
In the meantime, BBC broke the news at at 10.30am. At about 9:20 a.m. Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards. She was on her way to be interviewed by British actor Peter Ustinov, who was filming a documentary for Irish television. 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. As she passed a wicket gate guarded by Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, the two opened fire. Sub-inspector Beant Singh fired three rounds into her abdomen from his .38 revolver. Satwant Singh then fired 30 rounds from his Sterling submachine gun into her after she had fallen to the ground. After the shooting, both threw their weapons down and Beant Singh said "I have done what I had to do. You do what you want to do." In the next six minutes Tarsem Singh Jamwal and Ram Saran, soldiers in the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, captured and killed Beant Singh in a separate room. Satwant Singh was arrested by Gandhi's other bodyguards along with an accomplice trying to escape, and was seriously wounded in the attack initiated by Beant Singh.
At about 12 noon Aveek Sarkar called an editorial meeting of the main publications. Anandabazar Patrika, The Telegraph, Sunday and Ravivar Magazine. It was attended by M J Akbar, Gour Kishore Ghosh, Niren Chakravarty, Nikhil Sarkar, S P Singh, Shekar Bhatia. The discussion was on the assassination and how to carry the news and editorial. Around 1.00pm he called the Art Directors and the Page Processing Managers. At around 2.00pm he called the Advertisement Managers.
That is where I came in. You are right we had no business to be called. As we entered we were not even asked to sit. Curt was the direction. All publications were to be stripped of all advertisements. Thats all. As we were leaving he called me back and asked me to sit. I took one corner chair and clung to it.
Slowly the room got empty as one by one everyone started to leave. There were a few left M. J Akbar, Bipul Guha, the Art Director and P Banerjee the Print and Production Manager.
He called me and asked if I have the contact numbers of Arun Singh, the Marketing Controller of Reckitt Coleman and Arun Nehru, the Vice President of Jenson & Nicholson. Both were my clients in my previous job at Rediffusuion ,close to the Gandhi family: one a friend of Rajiv Gandhi from Doon and the other a cousin. I replied in affirmative and he asked me to get it.
As I returned with the numbers I found them discussing the front page of The Telegraph dated 1st November. The Telegraph and the Sunday magazine had long been anti to Indira Gandhi and Aveek Sarkar wanted to mend the fence. The style in those days of a person dead was to have a Black & white image preferably a radiant one. I blurted out:Why not in Colour ? A large 4 Column by 54 centimeters running down the whole of the paper. Colour had not been introduced in newspaper and it was under trial. I thought what a blunder to blurt out. I left the chamber hurriedly.
Salma Sultan gave the first news of the assassination of Indira Gandhi on Doordarshan's evening news on 31 October 1984, more than 10 hours after she was shot. It was alleged that R. K. Dhawan, Mrs. Gandhi's secretary, overruled intelligence and security officials who had ordered the removal of Sikh policemen, including her eventual assassins, as a security threat. Beant Singh was one of Gandhi's favourite guards, whom she had known for ten years. The other assassin, Satwant Singh, was 22 years old when the assassination occurred and had been assigned to Gandhi's guard just five months before the assassination.
Indira Gandhi was brought at 9:30 a.m. to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS-New Delhi), where 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. He stated that as many as 30 bullets struck Gandhi, from two sources, a Sterling and a revolver. The assailants had fired 33 bullets at her, of which 30 had hit; 23 had passed through her body while seven were trapped inside. Dogra extricated bullets to establish the identity of the weapons and to correlate each weapon with the bullets recovered.
I was in the office the whole night. Sometimes during the day I learnt that attempts are being made to have a large image of Indira Gandhi smiling in the front page of The Telegraph. There were two restrictions. To find a picture of Indira Gandhi in Colour in the ABP Library with high resolution for it to be blown up to a size of 4 Column by 54 centimeters and to print colour.
I slept in the office to wake up in the morning to find The Telegraph with a 2 Column by 22 Cm image of Indira Gandhi, smiling with a bunch of flowers in her hand.
I clutched a copy in my hand and went home. There was a faint glint of tears in my eyes for I had met Indira Gandhi once.