Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh hanged

Who: Satwant Singh, one of the two bodyguards who shot Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984, and Kehar Singh, a government employee. Wikipedia describes Kehar Singh as a clerk in a New Delhi supply office and the uncle of Beant Singh, the other bodyguard, who was killed by security personnel straight after the shooting.

What: Both men were hanged at Tihar Jail on January 6, 1989, a Friday. Wire reports say they were marched from their death row cells to the gallows and pronounced dead within half an hour. Two Sikhs shouted a religious battle cry moments before the hanging. A Home Ministry official said Kehar Singh declared his innocence, and Satwant Singh said he had no regrets.

The road to the gallows ran through the Supreme Court. On August 3, 1988 it freed a third accused, Balbir Singh, whose conviction rested on diary entries that many legal experts thought weak. It upheld the death sentences on Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh, saying they deserved death for "this most foul and heinous crime". The Christian Science Monitor noted that only a plea to the President remained. Defence lawyers, including Ram Jethmalani, argued that the case against Kehar Singh was circumstantial. Wikipedia, drawing on the International Commission of Jurists, says the only substantial evidence against him was several talks with Beant Singh.

Where: Tihar Jail, New Delhi. Heavily armed police and paramilitary units were on alert in Delhi, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana.

Why it mattered: The hangings ended the case over the killing that came a day before the November 1984 Delhi pogrom began. The wire report says the executions "prompted threats of massacres by Sikh militants" and that some "scattered violence was reported".

Indian courts treated the killing as a crime. The Sikh Panth's institutions remember the two men differently. The Tribune reported that on January 6, 2003 the Akal Takht held a Bhog and ardas for Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, and a report of January 7, 2004 says that at a shaheedi samagam for Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh the Jathedar, Giani Joginder Singh Vedanti, honoured Satwant Singh's mother, Bibi Pyar Kaur. In August 2026 ThePrint reported that Kehar Singh's son, also named Satwant Singh, aged 61, was named the Akali Dal (Waris Punjab De) candidate for Bassi Pathana.