Rahul by Jatin Gandhi, Veenu Sandhu Page A

Sikh bodyguards around her. All Sikh officers posted at 1 Safdarjung Road had been quietly withdrawn. But Indira was not happy with the decision. She said she could not be called a secular prime minister if she took such a step. On her insistence, the Sikh security guards were redeployed at her residence, but with riders. Rameshwar Nath Kao, Indira’s security adviser and the first chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), gave strict instructions that no Sikh bodyguard was to be posted near her alone, writes B. Raman, former head of R&AW’s counterterrorism division, in his book,
The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane
. Every Sikh security guard deployed close to her would be accompanied by a non-Sikh officer. Under no circumstances would two Sikh officers be deployed together. Despite the stringent security measures, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh succeeded in manipulating the roster. On the morning of 31 October 1984, the two were positioned not far from each other and in close proximity to the prime minister at her residence. Kao was in Beijing that day. That’s where he received the news of Indira’s assassination. He immediately flew back to Delhi on a special plane arranged by the Chinese government, and later resigned from his post.
    Indira’s death was followed by anti-Sikh violence of the worst kind in New Delhi and one that the government machinery did little to contain. At best, it looked the other way. Nearly 3,000 Sikhs were killed in the violence. There was violence in other parts of the country, too, but it was the most widespread and prolonged in the national capital. Rajiv was sworn in as prime minister the same evening. Indira had thought of her Sikh bodyguards being taken off duty as a non-secular act and had ordered them right back; Rajiv, on the other hand, seemed to have reacted more out of a sense of personal loss rather than as prime minister of the nation when he remarked on the violence saying, ‘When a big tree falls, the earth shakes.’ His remark did little to assuage the feelings of the Sikhs first shaken by Operation Blue Star in June 1984 and then by the young prime minister’s inaction against the rioters. These decisions only increased the family’s own security concerns.
    With intelligence reports confirming that Rajiv and his family were on the hit list, their security became an issue of immediate concern. So far, the Intelligence Bureau had coordinated and supervised all security matters related to the prime minister. But providing physical security was the responsibility of the police. There was no exclusive, dedicated agency to look after the security of the prime minister of India. On 8 April 1985, the SPG came into being to fill the gap. Its task was to ensure the protection of the prime minister’s family—Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka—as well as of Rajiv Gandhi. A tight security ring was formed around them, cutting them off from the outside world.
    The Gandhis also moved from 1 Safdarjung Road to 7 Race Course Road, which has remained the official residence of the prime minister of India ever since. Rajiv was the first prime minister to occupy this address. With security guards spread across the premises, the house practically became a prison for Rajiv’s family. ‘The only space outside our four walls where we could step without a cordon of security was our garden,’ wrote Sonia in her book,
Rajiv
. After Indira was killed, Sonia feared that her family would also meet the same fate that had befallen Bangladesh President, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and his family. Rahman was assassinated in August 1975 in a bloody military coup along with his wife, three sons (one of whom was barely ten), two daughters-in-law, his brother, a nephew and eighteen other people.
    It was in this atmosphere of high security—heightened by Indira’s fear for the safety of her family and later compounded by her killing—that Rahul spent his childhood. The security cover brought with it several