Assassinate Mahatma Gandhi

Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi
A memorial marks the spot in Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti), New Delhi, where Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated at 5:17 p.m. on 30 January 1948.
Location	New Delhi
Date	30 January 1948 17:17 (Indian Standard Time)
Target	Mahatma Gandhi
Weapons	Beretta M 1934 Semi-automatic pistol
Deaths	1 (Gandhi)
Perpetrator	Nathuram Godse

Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948 in the compound of Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti), a large mansion in central New Delhi. His assassin was Nathuram Vinayak Godse, a Chitpavan brahmin from Pune, Maharashtra, a Hindu nationalist, a member of the political party, the Hindu Mahasabha, as well as a former member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu paramilitary volunteer organization. Godse had planned the assassination with other Hindus from various backgrounds including a refugee from the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.

Gandhi had just walked up the low steps to the raised lawn behind Birla House where he conducted his multi-faith prayer meetings every evening. Godse stepped out from the crowd flanking the path leading to the dais and into Gandhi's way, firing three bullets at point-blank range. Gandhi instantly fell to the ground. Gandhi was carried back to his room in Birla house from where a representative emerged some time later to announce that he had died.

The Gandhi murder trial opened in May 1948 in Delhi's historic Red Fort, with Godse the main defendant, and his collaborator Narayan Apte and six others the co-defendants. According to Markovits (2004) Godse tried to "use the courtroom as a political forum by reading a long declaration in which he attempted to justify his crime. He accused Gandhi of complacence towards Muslims, blamed him for the sufferings of Partition, and generally criticized his subjectivism and pretension to a monopoly of the truth." According to Mallot (2012), Godse blamed Gandhi for continuing to appease Muslims in a manner "that my blood boiled and I could tolerate him no longer".

The trial was rushed through, the haste sometimes attributed to the home minister Vallabhbhai Patel's desire "to avoid scrutiny for the failure to prevent the assassination." The trial was public, but the statement that Nathuram Godse gave during the trial on why he killed Gandhi was immediately banned by the Indian government. Godse and Apte were sentenced to death on 8 November 1949. They were hanged in the Ambala jail on 15 November 1949.