Indira Ghandi has became very unpopular amongst the members of the Sikh community due to her authorization for the bombing of one of the Sikh sacred places.
It happens that a significant number of her bodyguards were Sikh and most likely her assassination by the two Sikh bodyguards was a result of Indira Gandhi role in the mentioned bombing.
The place where she was shot by the two bodyguards was in the gardens of Indira's residence and the whole site is now a memorial museum which can be visited for free.
More info, from Wikipedia:
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visit link)
Operation Blue Star had a wide impact on politics in India as many Sikh youths joined the Khalistan movement. Indira Gandhi was unpopular among Sikhs due to her role in the operation, which had destroyed and damaged portions of the Akal Takht and caused massive casualties among Sikh pilgrims. Sikh sensibilities were also offended at the alleged entry of army personnel with boots into the temple complex and the alleged destruction of Sikh scriptures and manuscripts in the temple library that caught fire due to explosives used during the operation. Such claims and other rumours led to an atmosphere of mistrust towards the government and ended in a conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi. This occurred within four months of the conclusion of the operation.
The perception of threat to Gandhi's life increased after the operation. Accordingly, Sikhs were removed from her personal bodyguard by the Intelligence Bureau due to the fear of assassination. However, Gandhi was of the opinion that this would reinforce her anti-Sikh image among the public and strengthen her political opponents. She ordered the Special Protection Group to reinstate her Sikh bodyguards, including Beant Singh who was reported to be her personal favorite.
Assassination
The spot where Indira Gandhi was shot down is marked by a glass opening in the crystal pathway at the Indira Gandhi Memorial.
At about 9:20 a.m. Indian Standard Time on 31 October 1984, Gandhi was on her way to be interviewed by British actor Peter Ustinov who was filming a documentary for Irish television. She was walking through the garden of the Prime Minister's Residence at No. 1 Safdarjung Road in New Delhi towards the neighboring 1 Akbar Road office.
She passed a wicket gate guarded by Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, and the two men opened fire. Beant Singh fired three rounds into her abdomen from his .38 revolver,then Satwant Singh fired 30 rounds from his Sten submachine gun after she had fallen to the ground. Both men then threw down their weapons and Beant Singh said, "I have done what I had to do. You do what you want to do." In the next six minutes, Border Police officers Tarsem Singh Jamwal and Ram Saran captured and killed Beant Singh. Satwant Singh was arrested by Gandhi's other bodyguards along with an accomplice trying to escape; he was seriously wounded. Satwant Singh was hanged in 1989 with accomplice Kehar Singh.
Salma Sultan gave the first news of the assassination of Indira Gandhi on Doordarshan's evening news on 31 October 1984, more than ten hours after she was shot. It is alleged[by whom?] that Gandhi's secretary R. K. Dhawan overruled intelligence and security officials who had ordered the removal of Sikh policemen as a security threat, including her assassins.
Beant Singh was one of Gandhi's favorite guards whom she had known for ten years. Satwant Singh was 22 years old when he assassinated her and had been assigned to Gandhi's guard just five months before the assassination.
Death
Gandhi's blood-stained saree and her belongings at the time of her assassination, preserved at the Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum in New Delhi.
Gandhi was taken to the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences in New Delhi at 9:30 a.m., where doctors operated on her. She was declared dead at 2:20 p.m. The postmortem examination was conducted by a team of doctors headed by Tirath Das Dogra, who stated that 30 bullets had struck Gandhi from a Sterling sub-machine gun and a revolver. The assailants had fired 33 bullets at her, of which 30 had hit; 23 had passed through her body, while seven remained inside. Dogra extracted bullets to establish the identity of the weapons and to correlate each weapon with the bullets recovered by ballistic examination. The bullets were matched with respective weapons at CFSL Delhi. Her body was taken in a gun carriage through Delhi roads on the morning of 1 November to Teen Murti Bhavan where her father stayed and where she lay in state.[1] She was cremated on 3 November near Raj Ghat, a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, at an area named Shakti Sthal. Her elder son and successor Rajiv Gandhi lit the pyre.
Aftermath
Over the next four days, thousands of Sikhs were killed in retaliatory violence.
The Justice Thakkar Commission (headed by Justice Manharlal Pranlal Thakkar) of Inquiry set up to probe Indira Gandhi's assassination recommended a separate probe for the conspiracy angle behind the assassination. The Thakkar Report stated that the "needle of suspicion" pointed at R. K. Dhawan for complicity in the conspiracy.
Satwant Singh and alleged conspirator Kehar Singh were sentenced to death. Both were executed on 6 January 1989.
A Punjabi movie titled Kaum De Heere ('People's Diamonds') highlighting the role/lives of the two guards that assassinated Indira Gandhi was set to be released on 22 August 2014, but was banned by the Indian government.