The accused did not want to be defended

For me, covering the nine-month-long assassination trial of Indira Gandhi for a national daily was a mixed bag of experiences. There was the fact of the mindless killing one had to contend with, but also ridiculous moments involving the prosecution and the defendants.

Justice Mahesh Chandra, who delivered the judgment on January 22, 1986, sentencing to death the accused — Satwant Singh, Kehar Singh and Balbir Singh (who was acquitted by the Supreme Court) — became a judge of the Delhi high court in 1990 (Beant Singh had died in police firing on the spot).

Justice Chandra had on several occasions given me a lift in his well-escorted car. During one of the rides he said he got scared upon examining Satwant’s gun. “But why?” I asked on the way to his distant Pandara Road residence. “I wasn’t scared of the weapon. I got scared when Satwant told me he could explain how the weapon works,” Chandra replied.
In the courtroom, the accused were seated on wooden stools in a 5x15-feet enclosure, watching their lawyer, PN Lekhi, defend them in a hopeless case.

During the course of the trial, Satwant told me he didn’t want to be defended as “I maintain that I killed Mrs Gandhi”. “Why is he (Lekhi) telling the court that it was someone else who shot at her (Gandhi) from behind?” Satwant wondered aloud. Then snubbing me in chaste Punjabi, he said: “You presswallas won’t ever write what I am saying!”

“Tell us what you want written,” I told him. There followed a long pause. Then he asked me to take down dictation. I put my pen on my notepad. Satwant uttered a flurry of the choicest of Punjabi abuses targeting the slain prime minister, the judge, the media and his own lawyer.

Three years later, the Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence of Satwant and Kehar. Then it was learnt that Satwant could not be executed because a bullet fired by security guards had lodged in his spine during the assassination. A long debate ensued on whether an injured person could be hanged. A panel of doctors confirmed the presence of a bullet, but gave the opinion that it could be extracted to ready him for the execution.

Two hangmen, Kalu and Kalia, had been brought from outstation to tighten the noose. The job was done by Kalu, a resident of Meerut, for which he was paid Rs150 plus the fare for his journey to-and-fro.

Satwant was buried in a plot adjacent to the jail. The tract of land was acquired by the government and another complex for jail inmates was built on it.