Bibi Bimal Kaur Khalsa

Bibi Bimal Kaur Khalsa was the widow of Bhai Beant Singh, who with Bhai Satwant Singh shot Indira Gandhi on 31 October 1984, and she became the Member of Parliament for Ropar in 1989. Wikipedia gives her birth date as 7 November 1950, though it records a conflict over her birthplace. It says she trained as a nurse and was working at Lady Hardinge Medical College in Delhi in 1984. She married Beant Singh on 23 January 1976, and they had three children.

Key moments

• After 31 October 1984 she was detained and questioned for about two weeks, and possibly tortured (Wikipedia). Damdami Taksal paid for her children's schooling for two years, and she moved to Punjab in 1985 and worked with the Sikh student federations.
• June 1986: Wikipedia, citing newspaper reports of the time, says she spoke to a crowd at Sri Harmandir Sahib on the anniversary of Blue Star, that clashes followed in which a guard was killed, and that she was arrested, charged with murder and spent two years in jail.
• 1989: she wins the Ropar seat on the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) ticket, led by Simranjit Singh Mann, with 424,010 votes, 60.38 percent, and a margin of 230,576 over the Congress candidate Raja Singh (Election Commission figures on IndiaVotes). She served from 2 December 1989 to 13 March 1991 (Wikipedia).
• 2 September 1991: she dies at Mohali, aged 40. Wikipedia reports that the police attributed her death to electrocution from a washing machine, that some press reports said she had taken cyanide, and that her relatives disputed both accounts, alleged she had been poisoned in police custody, and asked for a post-mortem, which the police refused. Her death remains disputed.

Her family in the Panth's memory. The Tribune reported that a bhog ceremony and ardas were held at Sri Akal Takht Sahib in January 2003 for Bhai Satwant Singh and Bhai Beant Singh. Beant Singh's father, Baba Sucha Singh, won the Bathinda seat in 1989, the same year as she won Ropar, and her son Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa contested Bathinda in 2004 and polled 113,490 votes (The Tribune, which calls Sucha Singh Sarabjeet's grandfather). According to Wikipedia, Sarabjeet won Faridkot in 2024.

What she is remembered for: she is remembered as a Shaheed's widow who was elected to Parliament by a wide margin during the Kharku years, and whose death at forty her relatives say was not the accident the police described.