‘Has this man killed the Prime Minister?’ Govinda looked up at his father but his father refused to return his gaze. His father seemed sick and said nothing, though his grimace made him appear to be hurt. When he had first witnessed the violence, Govinda thought that this was against the law and the police would appear. But no one seemed to be calling for the police. No one mentioned the word, ‘police’. Not even his father. He worried his father would leave him there at the shop with the violent men. He wondered if they would go to jail simply for witnessing this disgraceful act. He couldn’t stop a stream of unrelated thoughts running through his head. He felt anger towards the men who were attacking the Sikh and he wanted to hurt them in return but he knew he was too small. He wondered if his father would do something. He wondered if the Sikh deserved what he was getting. He felt bad for watching, the fear and anxiety he felt was immense but he could not turn away and he hated the fact that he was helpless. All the time he wondered what would happen next. Would the attackers turn and hurt him and his father? He thought of Mumbles. Surely they would attack him. He wondered if his mother was okay. He hoped no one in his family would ever get hurt like this.

The people in the shop continued to beat the Sikh even though he was already badly wounded. Govinda’s father was trying to get him out but there was no clear path. The exit was blocked.

Govinda thought he recognised the Prime Minister’s voice but he knew the Prime Minister had been killed. The news was sketchy. They were playing old stories about the Prime Minister. ‘When I have Sikhs like this beside me, then I don’t believe I have anything to fear,’ she said. ‘How can we claim to be secular?’

The man on the radio mentioned another Sikh name: ‘Satwant Singh had been assigned five months earlier to Mrs Gandhi’s detail.’

This made the angry crowd in the shop increasingly furious. ‘Treason,’ cried a man as he tried to spark a match that wouldn’t light. Another man ran into the kitchen. He came out with a bottle of kerosene and poured it on the battered and bleeding Sikh.

‘The two men were no more than seven feet away as she greeted them. Beant Singh drew a .38 revolver and fired three shots into her abdomen. As she fell to the ground, Satwant Singh sprayed thirty rounds from his Sten automatic weapon into her body.’

Someone picked up a chair and threw it across the room. The man on the radio continued saying the same thing over and over again, ‘Separatists will not be tolerated.’ All semblance of control was lost.