Bimal Kaur Khalsa

Bibi Bimal Kaur (died 1990) was an Indian politician and the wife of Beant Singh, one of the two assassins of Indira Gandhi.

Bibi Bimal Kaur was a nurse at Lady Hardinge Medical College when her husband assassinated Indira Gandhi.[1] Immediately after the assassination she was picked by the Indian security forces, she disappeared for several days leaving her children Amrit, Sarabjeet and Jassi at home. The Damdami Taksal paid for her children's education for two years.

Bimal Kaur was later arrested and imprisoned for two years for an incendiary speech in a gurdwara. On Wednesday, June 4, 1986, when she was 35 years old, she led a rampaging group of militants, about 200 in number, armed and attacking the guards at the Golden Temple, to mark the Operation Blue Star. The crowd cheered for Khalistan, and openly threatened to kill Punjab’s moderate chief minister, Surjit Singh Barnala.[2] A guard was killed and seven people were injured. Many journalists, about a dozen, witnessed the guard’s death and remained mute spectators.[3]

Later she was elected a member of Lok Sabha from Ropar. Her father-in-law, Beant Singh's father, Sucha Singh Maloa was a member of parliament[4] Sarbjit Singh, her son, was nominated by the SAD (A) headed by Simranjit Singh Mann to run for parliament from the Bathinda and Mansa in 2004.[5]

Bimal Kaur's death is shrouded in mystery. The first reports that reached the press indicated that Bimal Khalsa consumed cyanide. As she had small children, the suspicion immediately arose that she had been forcibly administered cyanide. Subsequently, this story was "corrected" by the police and it was given out that she had died by electrocution while using a washing machine. A 13-year-old servant normally did this work but this boy was not in the house at the time of her death. Her nearest relative demanded a post-mortem which, under normal circumstances, the police was bound to conduct on request but the police refused this. She died on 2 September 1990. [6]

References
  1. http://www.preventgenocide.org/prevent/news-monitor/2003mar.htm Playing at Grown-Ups FEAR has been their childhood companion
  2. SIKHS SOUGHT IN SLAYING, NYTimes 6 June 1986
  3. Assassin’s Widow Charged With Murder After Rioting In Golden Temple, June 5, 1986
  4. Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogues with Sikh Militants By Cynthia Keppley Mahmood, p. 136 Published 1996
  5. The Tribune, Chandigarh, India - Punjab
  6. Inderjit Singh Jaijee, Politics of Genocide, Pg 119-120
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