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The Documentary

Assassination - When Delhi Burned

Assassination: When Delhi Burned

Duration: 27 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC World Service OnlineLatest broadcast: on BBC World Service Online

Bobby Friction was in Delhi visiting his relatives when the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated on the 31 October 1984 by her two Sikh bodyguards. Riots erupted across the city to avenge the killing. Bobby went into hiding with his family to escape the mobs who went on the rampage in the bloody aftermath of her death.

Professor Swaran Singh, head of the Division of Mental Health and Wellbeing at Warwick University and a consultant psychiatrist was a trainee surgeon in Delhi in 1984. He witnessed first-hand the riots, the brutality of the killings and the anguish of those who survived. He was moved to work with the children who lost parents - carrying out medical checks and setting up a play area for them in the Tilak Vihar area of Delhi.

However, two years later he left not only Tilak Vihar, but India, and vowed never to return, traumatised by all he had seen. Now, 30 years on from the assassination of Indira Gandhi, Bobby Friction takes Swaran back to Delhi and together they go in search of the children he left behind in 1984.

(Photo: Bobby Friction (fourth from left) and professor Swaran Singh (fourth from right), with the men who were children of 1984. BBC copyright) Show less

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