Satwant and Kehar Singh trial

Who: Satwant Singh, who fired on Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984, alongside fellow bodyguard Beant Singh; Kehar Singh, a former government employee; and Balbir Singh, a former security guard. All three were charged over the killing, which was carried out to avenge the Army assault on Sri Harmandir Sahib.

What: Beant Singh was killed by other security personnel at the scene, and Satwant Singh survived. The Christian Science Monitor says all three were convicted of conspiring to kill Gandhi, and History.com says Satwant Singh was convicted in 1986. According to Black Warrant, the memoir of Tihar jail official Sunil Gupta, as reviewed by Sikh Siyasat News, Tihar prepared in December 1984 to try the three inside the jail, with a courtroom set up in the superintendent's office and Additional Sessions Judge Mahesh Chandra presiding. The defence lawyers, including Ram Jethmalani, went to the Supreme Court against a trial inside the jail and lost.

On August 3, 1988, the Supreme Court acquitted Balbir Singh and upheld the death sentences on Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh. Legal observers had expected all three sentences to stand. The evidence against Balbir Singh was thin, resting on diary entries recording meetings and on his statements against the Army action; his lawyer said he was caught up by police zeal. The court called the crime foul and said the country is ruled by ballots, not bullets. Gupta, who watched both hangings, calls the evidence against Kehar Singh a farce, and Kehar Singh's family filed repeated mercy petitions.

Where: Tihar Jail, New Delhi. Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh were hanged there on January 6, 1989. A Home Ministry official said Kehar Singh protested his innocence and Satwant Singh said he had no regrets. According to Gupta they chanted "Jo Bole So Nihal", their bodies were not given to their families, and their ashes were immersed at Haridwar.

Why it mattered: The Monitor warned that the hangings could feed violence by Sikhs demanding Khalistan, who had made the accused into heroes, while Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's accord with moderate Sikhs had already collapsed. In Panthic memory the two are Shaheed: the Akal Takht Jathedar has called them great martyrs, and Sikh bodies report that portraits of the three hang in the Sikh museum inside the Darbar Sahib complex.