Shaheed Bhai Beant Singh

Beant Singh was a Sikh member of the security detail of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. On 31 October 1984, at her residence in Safdarjung Road, New Delhi, he and fellow bodyguard Satwant Singh shot her, about four months after Operation Blue Star. Beant Singh was killed that day. Sikh institutions honour him as a Shaheed; the Indian state treats the act as the assassination of a Prime Minister. He is a different man from Beant Singh, the Punjab Chief Minister killed in 1995.

What the court record says: The Supreme Court judgment in Kehar Singh v State (Delhi Administration), as summarised by iPleaders, records that both men knew her schedule and arranged their duties so that Beant Singh stood at the gate and Satwant Singh was in the booth. Beant Singh fired five rounds and Satwant Singh twenty-five bullets. Security personnel fired on both men. Beant Singh died at the scene and Satwant Singh survived. HISTORY.com reports that Beant Singh had been due for transfer because of threats against the Prime Minister, and that Indira Gandhi personally cancelled the transfer because she trusted him.

The Panthic account: Sikh institutions place the act in the context of the army attack on Sri Akal Takht Sahib and Sri Harmandir Sahib in June 1984. At a January martyrdom anniversary at Darbar Sahib, Giani Gurminder Singh named Beant Singh with Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh as those who avenged that attack, and called Beant Singh a great martyr (SGPC press note). In January 2003 The Tribune reported a bhog and ardas at Sri Akal Takht Sahib for Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, with the granthis of Akal Takht and Harmandar Sahib paying tribute.

Key moments

• 31 October 1984: Indira Gandhi is shot; Beant Singh dies at the scene.
• The killings of Sikhs that followed, the Tesra Ghallughara (a name Sikhs also give to the June 1984 attack on Sri Darbar Sahib): the Ahuja Committee put the Delhi toll at 2,733 Sikhs in three days, with hundreds more killed elsewhere (Human Rights Watch).
• 1986: Satwant Singh is convicted (HISTORY.com). He and Kehar Singh, whom the prosecution tied to the plot as a relative of Beant Singh, were hanged on 6 January 1989.
• June 2024: his son Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa wins the Faridkot Lok Sabha seat as an independent, by over 70,000 votes, campaigning on sacrilege and drugs (The Tribune).

Wikipedia gives his birth as 1959 in Jaitu, Punjab, and names his wife as Bimal Kaur Khalsa, who won the Ropar Lok Sabha seat in 1989 (indiavotes lists her as a Shiromani Akali Dal (Mann) winner).

Remembered for: In Sikh memory he is Shaheed Bhai Beant Singh, honoured each year with Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh. The state and many critics see only the killing of a Prime Minister by a guard sworn to protect her. Both views are held, and both are recorded here.