The Death Case That Shattered Indira Gandhi

Five months after Indira Gandhi's 1980 election victory, Sanjay Gandhi was killed in a plane crash.

Indira was devastated.

From this time on, she seemed to lose her sharp instincts and tough resolve.

The last years of her prime ministership were marked by violent conflict in many parts of the country.

She gave orders for Operation Blue Star, the storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar by the army to flush out the pro-Khalistan terrorists hidden there.

It was a decision that led to her assassination on October 31, 1984.

The joy of the 1980 victory was short-lived.

On the morning of June 23, 1980, five months after Indira Gandhi had been sworn in as prime minister, Sanjay Gandhi took his new Pitts S-2A plane for a joyride, lost control while doing aerobatics and crashed.

Both he and the flying instructor, Captain Subhash Saxena -- who had initially refused to go with him, knowing Sanjay's inexperience at flying this particular plane -- were instantly and gruesomely killed.

Indira had repeatedly warned Sanjay against aerobatics on the Pitts S-2A.

"The evening before he died, we went for a ride on the same plane," recalled Maneka Gandhi. "It was the first time he was going in it."

"In the plane I screamed and screamed for I think two hours and, when we came down, I ran home and told my mother-in-law: 'Ma, I need you to tell Sanjay not to fly this plane. He can fly any plane he wants, but not this one'."

"My mother-in-law said to him in front of me (Dhirendra Brahmachari was also there), 'Maneka's never been so strong about something. If she's saying na jao (don't go), toh na jao tum (then don't go)'."

"She said, 'I'm afraid I have to put my foot down'."

"Then (Indira Gandhi's personal secretary and confidante, R K) Dhawan came in and started saying, 'Arre yeh toh mardon ka jahaz hai. Manekaji aise bol rahi hai kyonki woh aurat hain. (This is a man's plane. Manekaji is saying this because she's a woman)'."

"My mother-in-law asked, 'Sanjay, is it safe?'"

"And I said, 'No, it isn't; it's a horrible plane'."

"Then Sanjay said, 'Do teen din mein theek ho jayega (It'll be fine in two or three days), she'll get used to it'."

"The next morning, he was dead."

It was a massive, wrenching loss for his mother.

One of the enduring images of Sanjay's death is of Indira visiting the site of the plane wreckage not once but twice on June 23, inspecting bits of debris as if looking for remnants of her son and trying to relive his last moments.

Unkind comments were made that she was looking to find keys to a safe deposit box or vault containing his wealth, but instead it was Indira reverting to a primeval way of dealing with sudden and violent bereavement, returning to the site of death as if still searching for the disappeared loved one.

'Doctor, hamara dahina haath kat gaya (My right hand has been cut off),' she confided to Dr Mathur (Dr Krishna Prasad Mathur was Indira Gandhi's personal physician).

In 1980, Sanjay was at the very centre of Indira's political roadmap, the main organisation man to whom Youth Congress cadres had remained tenaciously loyal even as the stalwarts fell away from Indira.

With none of the heavyweights by her side, it was Sanjay who had become the party's supremo-in-waiting, the kurta-clad karta of the new Congress family, by now the newly appointed general secretary of the Congress.

Sanjay's activities during the Emergency had cost his mother an election, but, three years later, it was his organisational power and strategising that had brought her victory, or so she believed.

About 150 of the 353 Congress winning candidates in 1980 were Sanjay's recruits, impatient young bucks fiercely loyal to Sanjay, who scorned the old-fashioned niceties of their Congress seniors.