ABSTRACT
Gandhi was, of course, murdered; shot point blank by Nathuram Godse who pumped three bullets into his chest with an M1934 Beretta semi-automatic pistol on the evening of 30 January 1948. This much is known or, at any rate, not disputed. Godse himself along with his accomplices stood trial. He and Narayan Apte were sentenced to death, and hanged on 15 November 1949 in the Ambala jail. The two assassins had a relatively quiet death, except that Godse, if eye-witness accounts are to be believed, struggled for over 15 minutes at the scaffold while Apte went quickly. Their cremation and the immersion of their ashes were hushed up, but it was not as if the Godse legacy ended quietly there. Nathuram's younger brother, Gopal, was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role as accessory to the murder. After serving nearly 15 years, his sentence was commuted for good behaviour.
