Lalit Maken assassinated

Who: Lalit Maken, Congress MP for South Delhi and son-in-law of Shankar Dayal Sharma, later President of India; his wife Geetanjali; and a visitor, Balkishan (Balakrishnan in one account). Sources differ on the gunmen. The Tribune names Harjinder Singh Jinda and Sukhdev Singh Sukha of the Khalistan Commando Force. The Sikh history site June84 and Wikipedia name Sukhwinder Singh Shindu, also called K.C. Sharma, Sukha and Ranjit Singh "Kukki" Gill as the three who fired.

What: At about 10:30 a.m. on 31 July 1985 three men opened fire as Maken walked from his house to his car outside his home at Kirti Nagar, Delhi. His wife and the visitor were hit too. The attackers escaped on scooters. Maken had been named third in a People's Union for Civil Liberties list of 227 people accused of leading or instigating mobs against Sikhs in November 1984. In 2004 his nephew Ajay Maken said that Lalit took no part in the violence and suggested the killing may have come from political rivalry.

Where: Outside the Maken home, Kirti Nagar, Delhi.

Why it mattered: The killing came a week after the Rajiv-Longowal Accord and less than three weeks before Sant Longowal himself was assassinated on 20 August 1985. The men linked to the killing were later caught or killed. Sukha was arrested in Pune in September 1986. Jinda was arrested in December 1986, freed by armed men from a police van in March 1987, and arrested again at Gurdwara Majnu da Tilla in Delhi on 31 August 1987. Both were sentenced to death for the killing of General Arun Vaidya and hanged at Yerwada Jail on 9 October 1992. Shindu was shot dead in Chandigarh on 27 February 1988. Gill was arrested by Interpol in New Jersey on 14 May 1987 and, after years of fighting extradition, was brought back and sentenced to life imprisonment in February 2003.

The case also produced a rare act of forgiveness. In February 2004 Ajay Maken, then Speaker of the Delhi Assembly, wrote to Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit that the family had forgiven Gill and asked her to consider his release. In May 2009 Delhi's Sentence Review Board, which she chaired, decided to commute his life sentence, and Lalit Maken's daughter Avantika Maken said Gill should be let off.