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Dr. P Venugopal Book: On the morning of October 31, 1984, the new director was about to take charge at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) that no one had imagined even in their wildest dreams what happened suddenly. Shortly afterwards, the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, riddled with bullets, was brought there.
There was such an atmosphere of desperation and chaos in the hospital that it was difficult to describe in words. Dr. P. Venugopal, who operated on Mrs. Gandhi to remove bullets from her body, has still not forgotten that dreadful day.
Veteran cardiologist wrote the book ‘Heartfelt’ gives a detailed account of the four hours when the doctors, surgeons and nursing staff of AIIMS worked tirelessly to save Gandhi.
Venugopal was the head of the cardiac surgery department of AIIMS at that time and the achievement of performing the first heart transplant in India in August 1994 is also recorded in his name. The book by the former AIIMS director was released last week.
What is written about Indira Gandhi in the book?
She writes in the book, “Blood-soaked bullets falling on the floor from her saree, ‘O-negative’ The valiant effort to get a blood transfusion and the political discussion in the corridors of the hospital on the swearing-in of the next Prime Minister… 39 years later, everything is still vividly remembered.”
Dr. Venugopal has written, “ I was moved to see that thin body on the bed; Her stomach was bleeding and she was completely drenched in her own blood. The face had turned pale, as if all the blood had gone out of the body…. The blood was flowing fast, forming a pool of blood around them.”
Indira Gandhi’s security guards fired 33 bullets
Former PM Indira Gandhi was murdered by her own two security guards in the lawn of her residence. The assailants fired 33 bullets at him, of which 30 hit him, 23 passed through his body while seven went inside.
Venugopal (81) has written describing the situation of the incident, “I saw that he (doctor) was trying to transfuse O-negative blood to Mrs. Gandhi. The blood of this group is not easily available, but I could see that this effort was futile because along with blood transfusion, blood was oozing out at the same speed from his bullet-riddled body.” He said that the atmosphere in the hospital was such that no one could understand anything.
He says, “AIIMS employees gathered in large numbers. I Dr. H.D. Tandon, who was relinquishing his charge as Director on the same day, and Dr. Sneh Bhargava, who was taking over. It seemed that they do not understand what to do if they do. Clearly, the uncertainty of who the director was that day was preventing them from making a decision or taking action. Both were silent, they looked at me, as if asking what to do?”
Venugopal says that as the head of the cardiac surgery department, he looked at me and had to take a quick decision. He said, “…I ordered her to be taken to the OT (Operation Theatre) so that we could stop the bleeding… Everything had to be done so quickly that I didn’t even wait for the consent form to be signed and just proceeded increased.”
…but could not save
His plan was : “ First of all, with the help of a bypass machine, the blood flowing out of Mrs. Gandhi’s body should be stopped and the descending aorta should be closed so that the blood does not flow to the stomach, which was riddled with bullets.”
< pstyle="text-align: justify;"> He kept fighting for four hours. Venugopal remembers that he had to change his OT scrubs thrice because the scrubs were stained with blood. At around 2 pm, they tried to remove the Prime Minister from the bypass machine, but could not save him.
He recalled, “ When I came out of the OT to break the news to the people who had brought him, deep down inside I was feeling very despondent.. Rajiv Gandhi, who had been touring the eastern part of the country, was returning And almost everyone was of the opinion that they should wait for his arrival.”
‘…then Indira Gandhi could have survived’
Venugopal, who has performed more than 50,000 heart surgeries in the country, still maintains that if the former prime minister was “covered” or dragged to a cover, the initial bullets would have killed him. Despite that she would have survived.”
He said, “ It was learned that she fell as soon as the first bullet hit and the people accompanying her fled back leaving her alone on the ground. This emboldened the assassin and he fired several rounds of his machine gun at them at close range.’’
At that point the nurse’s room became the center of ‘debate, discussion and important conversation for the next several hours.’ The “main issue of the discussions was whether the President (Gyani Zail Singh) would be ready to swear in Rajiv Gandhi as the Prime Minister.”
His book “Heartfelt: A Cardiac Surgeon’s Pioneering Journey” is published by HarperCollins India. The book is co-authored by Venugopal with his wife Priya Sarkar.
(tagsToTranslate )Indira Gandhi
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