At 10 past 9 in the morning on 31 October 1984 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi emerged from one safter general road, her official residence, wearing a saffron saree and a broad smile on her face. She walked towards one Akbar road, the adjacent bungalow and her office, where Irish documentary film makeup Peter Alexander used to know was waiting to interview her. As she approached the gate, Beyoncé, a Sikh security guard posted there, shot her with his revolver. Another guard, Satwan Singh, also a Sikh, fired a volley of shots from his car buying. A total of 30 bullets hit her as she collapsed. Indira was alive when she was taken to the all-India Institute of Medical Sciences, just 20 minutes later. She died five hours later. Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, had been killed by her bodyguards. She had decided not to remove her Sikh bodyguards after Operation Blu star, which saw her order the Indian army to storm the Golden Temple to flush off terrorists just months earlier. Finance Minister Pranam Mukherjee, who was later the President of India, quotes Indira in his memoir, turbulent years, 1980 to 1986, as saying, Pranam Mukherjee, I know the consequences. Indira's assassination was a revenge killing for the military action on the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs. The community also blamed her for the death of thousands of Sikhs in Punjab during Operation Blu star. A day before her assassination at a public meeting in Bhuvaneshwar, Indira had said she was ready to embrace death in the service of the country. With the sense of foreboding, she had said, And then she spoke about the impact of her death on the country. She said, And then she spoke about the impact of her death on the country. She said, As the body lay in state at the Thinmurti house, her father Jawaharlal Nairu's official residence in the rest prophetic words zoomed an ominous ring. The last drop of her blood united the country against the scourge of terrorism. Ironically, her words also triggered a frenzied response resulting in what many say was a pogrom. As the government made a repeatedly played recordings of a speech, a wave of violence swept across Delhi and other parts of the country. Mobs armed with sticks, swords and petrol canisters who roamed the capital, seeking out Sikhs, lynched them and burned them alive in India's worst communal carnage since independence. Nearly 3,000 Sikhs were massacred in Delhi alone. For 3 days, a narkey ruled Delhi streets as heads of state arrived to attend India's funeral. President Ganesh Zelsingh's mortocate too was attacked by frenzied mobs. A Sikh himself, he was in an official tour in the Middle East when India was assassinated and he rushed back to Delhi. As Indira Gandhi's body laid in hospital, Congress leaders literally huddled in the corridors of the building to decide on her successor. They decided on her son Rajiv. They also decided to announce Indira's death only after Rajiv was sworn in as Prime Minister to avoid uncertainty in the country. Rajiv, then General Secretary of the Congress and a member of parliament was travelling in West Bengal when his mother was short dead. He rushed back to Delhi in a special plane. He took oath at 6.45 pm after which news of Indira's death was made public. The new government took office but was paralyzed for 3 days. The Delhi police was not in control of the violence sweeping the streets and calls to deploy the army were not heated. Dr. Ban Mohan Singh, former Prime Minister, said in 2019 that the anti-seek riots in Delhi could have been avoided, had the then home minister P.V. Narasimharau heated the advice of Congress leader Ayke Kuchral. Kuchral Prime Minister 9798 left an in general J.S. Arora, hero of the Bangladesh war and but one Singh, a prominent Sikh writer, had urged the President to deploy the army a day after Indira's assassination. They also met home minister P.V. Narasimharau. General Arora later said that the home minister had been grossly negligent in his approach. On the 2nd of November, the army was called in, curfew was imposed and shoot at sight orders issued. In reality, the effective deployment of the army was made on the 3rd of November after much of the writing and killings had taken place. Indira Gandhi was cremated on the banks of the Yamuna, that same day. Even decades after the violence and bloodshed, most of the political leaders accused of instigating the writing mobs haven't been brought to justice. Sir Jankumar, a former Congress MP, is the only senior leader who was convicted. In the meandering search for justice, four commissions of inquiry and two special investigating themes were set up to probe the 1984 riots. The latest theme was set up in 2018. It is investigating 186 cases that had been closed. As justice eludes, the wounds of 1984 have largely healed. But the question remains, how did a nation guided and protected by secular and democratic principles descends so uncontrollably and so quickly into a brutal, beastly mobocracy? It is a question that will continue to haunt us.