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Indira Gandhi assassination trial: Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh hanged

Satwant and Kehar are hanged.

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Satwant's father after the last meeting

Finally, the saga ended last fortnight. Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh, convicted for the assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi, were hanged in Delhi's Tihar Central Jail.

It was the culmination of the most sensational murder case ever in India, wending its way through various courts over four years, throwing up constitutional issues and attracting unprecedented publicity and controversy. In contrast, Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were hanged within 22 months of killing Mahatma Gandhi.

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The hanging did not end the protracted debate. Not only were the old arguments against and for capital punishments gone over again, there was a much livelier controversy over the culpability of Kehar Singh.

He was convicted of conspiring with Beant Singh who, along with Satwant Singh, shot Mrs Gandhi dead on October 31, 1984. Many believed that the evidence against Kehar was inconclusive, not enough to hang a man on.

Though the convicts, particularly assassin Satwant, had been swaggeringly confident at the initial trial, the shadow of the noose had its effect on his psyche. During his last days he had lost a lot of weight even though he used to eat well and exercise.

He was extremely restless on his last night and only dozed off for about an hour around 4 a.m. In the morning, his condition was even worse, say jail warders, but hope never died in him. Till the end, he kept repeating that a stay order might come.

He was quite ill, they added, when he was finally led to the gallows in Jail Three of the complex soon after 7.30 a.m. Kehar was in somewhat better shape but both shivered at the sight of the gallows under the heavily overcast sky on that damp, chilly morning of January 6. They stood ghostly and mute, watching the two hangmen, brought to Delhi three days earlier, examining the knots.

Immediately after they were certified dead, the bodies were taken just outside Jail Three where a platform had been specially built for their cremation. Two granthis had been brought from a nearby gurdwara and piles of wood and 16 kg of ghee kept ready.

While the bodies of executed prisoners are often handed to their families, the rules allow the administration to refuse this if a public demonstration is feared.

The families were not even allowed to come near the jail that morning. Satwant's family had stayed quietly in their rooms adjacent to the historic Sisganj Gurdwara in Old Delhi. But Kehar's stepson Rajinder Singh, who had tirelessly worked for his father's defence for the past four years, was there with his mother, Jasbir Kaur, and five brothers.

Also present among other relatives was Kehar's older sister and her husband. Though they tried to push ahead, they were stopped behind the barricades at the end of the adjacent road.

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The overcast morning was charged with emotion. At exactly 8 a.m., the family set up a wail, shouting the invocation Jo bole so nihal, sat sri akal. Rajinder led them in slogans of Shahid Kehar Singh amor rahe. His distraught aunt quickly clamped her hand over his mouth as he started to shout Rajiv Gandhi murdabad.

Rajinder, however, had clearly repeated over and again since the previous day that this was "state terrorism, murder of an innocent man by the state". As cameras clicked, the mourners struggled to hold back their tears. Jasbir Kaur. her eyes swollen, looked at the clouds and murmured: "Even God is crying."

Kehar Singh

After four years of courtroom drama and controversy the hangings marked the culmination of India's most hotly debated murder case ever.
Satwant Singh

By now, the family's main concern was getting Kehar's body and they petitioned the Supreme Court. The next day, a Saturday, Chief Justice R.S. Pathak and Justice M.N. Venkatachalliah sat at the former's residence to hear it. G. Ramaswamy, representing the State, said the ashes had already been collected by the jail staff that morning.

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The judges then ordered that Satwant's father Tarlok Singh and Rajinder along with one of his brothers be taken along when the ashes were taken for immersion.

The case had returned to the Supreme Court a half-dozen times in one form or another. It had upheld the death sentences against both last August after going into the evidence for and against in detail (the apex court often doesn't give more than a couple of hours to appeals). It acquitted Balbir Singh, the third man whom the Special Investigating Team (SIT) had accused of conspiring in the murder.

Since then, legal history had been made (India Today, December 31, 1988) during arguments over the constitutional provisions for pardon following the President's rejection of Kehar's appeal. The appeal went back to the President with the court's clarification that the power of clemency is unfettered but was rejected again by a five-judge bench on December 26.

K'ehar's counsel, Ram Jethmalani, made a last-ditch attempt to argue that the Government had not given the matter enough thought before rejecting it afresh. But the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal on January 5. The drill was already in high gear by then at Tihar Jail, which was readying itself for the third time for perhaps its most important execution.

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The death warrant had been sent there first on October 17 last year. After the President's first rejection of Kehar's application (Satwant never did appeal), the execution was set for December 2 but was stayed just 14 hours before the scheduled time of execution.

The special guard routine - nine changes a day - prescribed in the jail manual for the last days of death row prisoners had been begun then and were continued through the month. Precautions had been extraordinary for these prisoners right from the beginning.

In solitary confinement, they even had a separate kitchen - where they often asked for their favourite dishes. Huge amounts of fruit were provided, apart from milk and dry fruit, which Satwant liked.

A doctor tasted every meal half an-hour before it was served to them, lest it be poisoned. Jail doctors examined the convicts six times a day. Indeed, a jail worker said: "We are glad it's over. We had a tough time having such important prisoners here these last four years."

Kehar's wife and son outside Tihar

If the jail staff heaved a sigh of relief, the rest of north India was tautly on edge after the hanging. People seemed to expect bombs or shootings everywhere. The hanged men had after all become virtual folk heroes among sections of people in Punjab. Children were kept back from school and workers stayed home.

In Punjab, the situation could almost be described as panicky. Road traffic was down to below half the normal volume as people sat tight in their homes. Schools and colleges were closed across the state and even in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh. Trains on small lines in Punjab were suspended.

The mood was pretty sullen even though no major incidents of violence occurred in the first few days after the hanging. Those that occurred were not more than has become normal in the state.

Terrorists dragged 10 people out of a house and butchered them in Badowal village in Gurdaspur district. A bus was stopped near Bunder village in Faridkot district, its passengers ordered out and the vehicle set on fire. A railway station was also set on fire in the district.

The Border Security Force and the Central Reserve Police Force, apart from the regular police forces, were deployed in unprecedented numbers.

One Sikh journalist was stopped 19 times as he drove his red Maruti down a 12-km stretch in Chandigarh the day of the hanging. The clamp-down, however, managed to check the level of violence.

Two heavy-duty bombs were discovered and defused before they could explode in different parts of Ludhiana district on January 6, the day of the hanging.

That night, some villagers grappled with a terrorist and snatched his AK-A7 before he could use it in Morewala village in Ferozepore district. Despite ban orders throughout the state, the strong public opinion against the hangings was clearly evident.

The families were not allowed even near the jail. There were emotional scenes at the barricades as Kehar's relatives raised slogans.

In the border districts of Amritsar and Gurdaspur, even the skeletal bus services (5 per cent of normal) were suspended for want of passengers. Meanwhile, lakhs of people gathered in gurdwaras across the state to pay tribute to the hanged men.

The mendicant Sadhu Mohan, who has undertaken fasts and tours to promote peace in Punjab over the past four years, emphasised the importance of coming to grips with 'the emotive factor".

Militant groups such as the Babbar Khalsa have no political agenda at all but "if a member is assigned the task of killing somebody, he will undergo a kind of religious penance before...He is driven by a religious zeal," said Mohan. The hanging, he felt, "will aggravate and swell this emotive factor".

While Punjab's problems get messier, mystery continues to shroud several aspects of the conspiracy to murder Indira Gandhi. The SIT continues to function and sources say they are convinced that Attinder Pal Singh, now locked up in a Punjab jail, had also something to do with the assassination. It is even possible the whole rigmarole might start afresh with another murder trial.