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The Hindu
14-07-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Dr. Sneh Bhargava on Indira Gandhi's Final Hours
In this episode, Dr. Bhargava describes the chaos in the casualty ward, the desperate medical efforts to revive Mrs. Gandhi, and the political pressures that followed. She also reflects on her trailblazing career in radiology, her fight for modernising the department, and her unwavering stand against political interference. Now 95, Dr. Bhargava has released her memoir The Woman Who Ran AIIMS, revisiting the day India's history changed, and her role in leading India's top medical institution through its darkest hours. Host: Soma Basu Fo other On Books episodes:
The Hindu
11-07-2025
- Health
- The Hindu
‘I couldn't thank Mrs. Gandhi': Sneh Bhargava, former director of AIIMS
'If Indira Gandhi can run the country, why can't a woman run the country's premier medical institution?' This was Dr. Sneh Bhargava's reply to people upset that a woman from a low-profile Radiology department was appointed as director of the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, in 1984. She remains the first — and only woman — to have helmed AIIMS in the past seven decades. But what Dr. Bhargava never would have imagined was how day one as AIIMS director on October 31, 1984, would unfold. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had been shot by two bodyguards in the morning and was rushed to AIIMS. 'She had approved my appointment as AIIMS director barely 10 days ago; I never got an opportunity to thank her. At 9 a.m. on October 31 the meeting confirming me as director was underway when we were informed the Prime Minister was in casualty. It was unthinkable that a PM could come to the hospital without prior notice. I sensed something was terribly amiss,' recalls Dr. Bhargava. When she entered the casualty, she saw two resident doctors in a state of shock who pointed towards a gurney, on which the body lay still. Dr. Bhargava saw Mrs. Gandhi's signature grey-streaked hair, the pronounced aquiline nose and her saffron sari soaked in blood. The Prime Minister's personal secretary R.K. Dhawan, her close aide M.L. Fotedar and daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi were in tears. For the next four hours, the doctors tried to revive the Prime Minister, but in vain. Dr. Bhargava had realised this early enough. It was one of the most difficult days at work, admits Dr. Bhargava. And she has had several tough days, by virtue of being among the few women radiologists in the country at a time when the discipline was still evolving. Known for her guts to call out and stand against political pressure, Dr. Bhargava's priority remained patient health care. When the pandemic forced her to stay home, she began writing her memoir. On June 23, Dr. Bhargava turned 95 and released her book, The Woman Who Ran AIIMS. Edited excerpts from an interview at her Delhi home: Question: How do you remember October 31, 1984, with such clarity? Answer: My memory guided me. I have always done my work passionately and enjoyed every moment; that is why everything came back to me smoothly. Many times I felt I haven't done anything spectacular that needs to be documented. But as thoughts and memories kept flowing, I felt I had a story to tell. Q: It is such an irony that on the day you joined as AIIMS director, the woman who appointed you was brought for emergency treatment. Did you have a meltdown? A: Of course. But I knew I had to do my work as a professional. The meltdown had to be kept in the background. My only regret is I wasn't able to personally thank Mrs. Gandhi for believing in me and giving me the responsibility of running AIIMS. Q: Could you describe the day? A: My instinct told me something was wrong because the Prime Minister was brought to casualty without prior information. I saw her profusely bleeding body and immediately decided with two of our top surgeons to put her on the heart lung machine and see if we could revive her. We did not know how and what had happened to her. My foremost thought was to keep her body safe. There were bullets in her chest, liver, abdomen which were dropping off on the ground and blood was oozing from every organ. She had a rare B-minus blood group. The protocol dictated we keep two bottles of blood in the fridge for the Prime Minister. The two bottles finished in no time and we called up every hospital in Delhi; Only O-minus (universal donor) could be procured. I knew Mrs. Gandhi was no more. The Congress leaders did not want a power gap and told us not to announce anything but keep working on her till the party took a decision and the President and her son reached Delhi. Our surgeons kept infusing blood through the multiple wounds in the body and it kept draining out. Q: How difficult was it to embalm the body? A: We were unable to inject the embalming fluid through the arteries. It kept oozing out. So the anatomy department ensured the face was kept intact as there were no wounds there. I requested Sonia Gandhi to go home and get a fresh set of clothes for Mrs Gandhi. Q: How did you manage with other logistics and the swelling crowd outside AIIMS? A: There were tense moments. One of our Sikh doctors fled the OT when he learnt Mrs. Gandhi had been killed by her Sikh bodyguards. Gautam Kaul, who was the Additional Commissioner of Police and a first cousin of Mrs. Gandhi, handled the bandobast and also helped us with medico-legal formalities. It never struck us that there would be an inquiry. We had made only surgical notes but he told us to prepare a formal post-mortem report with photographs and also get a ballistic report and referred us to a ballistic expert, whom we got into AIIMS with much difficulty. As doctors, our focus was on controlling Mrs. Gandhi's blood loss and we hadn't taken an X-ray of her leg where she was first hit. When we took the X-ray of her leg, it revealed that the bullet was different from the ones that were lodged in her body. This was the first evidence of use of two different guns. We recorded it and it helped us during the inquest later.
Indian Express
02-06-2025
- Health
- Indian Express
At 95, only woman director of AIIMS owns many medical firsts — plus a glimpse of Roger Moore
Every Saturday, 95-year-old Dr Sneh Bhargava, professor emeritus at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and its only woman director ever, reviews films of the latest scientific breakthroughs — and AI, her latest obsession. 'As a radiologist, I still want to learn with AI and see the inside of a human body better. AI certainly improves your diagnosis but without your patient's history, it can't help you. That's why you still need to listen to your patient closely,' says the veteran who taught doctors to 'humanise' technology. Living by herself at her New Friends Colony home, tending to her bonsai in the garden and wearing her pearl strings and brooch, Dr Bhargava doesn't mind learning new skills. Just three years ago, she took to writing for the first time. Her autobiography, The Woman Who Ran AIIMS, is out now. And thanks to it, she has also learnt to do Zoom calls with help from her secretary. In fact, she is already writing her second book on the history of radiology, her mind sharp, her memory elephantine. 'I write in longhand and my secretary feeds it into a computer,' says Dr Bhargava who has marked many other firsts in her life. She was the first Indian woman radiologist in an all-male class at Westminster Hospital in the UK, got the first CT scan and ultrasound machines to India, elevated radiology from being a backroom photo division to a full scale department and earned the quiet admiration of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. 'She would come for tummy problems. There was no endoscopy then. So I would give her barium meals, liquids that outline the organs on an X-ray when swallowed. We didn't speak much but she was perceptive and would follow all instructions to a T. She even got her aunt along. She was very committed to the idea of AIIMS being a centre of medical excellence,' says Dr Bhargava. Which is why she still gets the chills that the woman who would silently assess her work on the floors, and make her the first woman director of AIIMS, would lie bloodied on a gurney on October 31, 1984. Indira Gandhi was assassinated on Dr Bhargava's first day at the job. 'Everybody remembers the charade of trying to revive her when she was gone. The bullets that had punctured her organs kept coming out as doctors tried to stop the bleeding. We couldn't even infuse the embalming liquid. But what I remember most is Mrs Gandhi's family in shock, grief and disarray, trying to hold themselves together before the public eye when they didn't know how,' says Dr Bhargava. She took the lead in protecting the Sikh staff from the riots that followed, opening her home and organising OPDs at Delhi government schools where Sikh families sought refuge. 'I had seen the horrors of Partition and I didn't like what I saw,' she says. Growing up in a liberal family in Lahore, with her father giving equal opportunity to sons and daughters, Dr Bhargava had practical wisdom. 'I played doctor with my dolls but when it came to me choosing radiology, I did a SWOT analysis. By exclusion, I chose radiology because up until then, you couldn't see inside a human body. Also doctors and specialists only focused on specific organs, and I wanted to know all about the human body, from head to toe. Besides, nobody wanted to do radiology, thinking it was just a photographer's job, so the field was open to develop and grow with,' she says. Dr Bhargava became the first to detect and analyse vertical B lines in an X-ray, which was the gold standard back then to detect inflammation and fluid build-up. 'Tuberculosis was very rampant in India then, it still is, but at that time it was worse. So I learnt a lot of what a chest X-ray can tell you about the lungs and their complications,' she says. Gradually, she used imaging to help doctors understand problems of the heart as well. Unlike most radiologists who submit reports, Dr Bhargava insisted on doctors giving her the patient history, correlating it with her image and then guiding the diagnosis. This symbiotic relationship helped her find acceptance over 24 years. 'So if the doctor tells me the symptoms show heart disease, then the increased level of fluid in the lymphatics can help both of us assess how serious it is. If my scan shows a lung collapse, history-taking can tell me if it is due to a tumour or an infection. If the patient loses weight drastically, then it could be an abnormal tumour,' she says. Sometimes she would suggest slides from different angles for a sharper diagnosis. It was this integrative approach that helped her lobby for a CT scan machine at AIIMS after she was introduced to it during a training session at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, US. But funding was a challenge. 'We got it in 1978. I spoke to cardiac surgeons and neurosurgeons, saying they would benefit the most. We sought help from our bureaucrat patients, who were posted in different ministries. That's how we got a grant from the Swedish International Development Agency, SIDA, with help from the MEA. There were 13 projects in the race but our cardiac and neuro surgeons put up a data-backed presentation on how the scanner could help speed up surgeries and save people from going abroad to access superior healthcare,' says Dr Bhargava. She still had an uphill task to get the ultrasound, which she managed, arguing it was safer for pregnant mothers than X-rays. 'There is always initial resistance and naysayers who say whether a poor country can afford technology. But that technology has revolutionised healthcare today. With a shortage of radiologists in the country, AI can further last mile connectivity,' she says. Dr Bhargava never thought much about gender bias. 'Beyond a point, your knowledge and expertise get respected,' she says. But during her tenure at the helm, from 1984 to 1990, she did push for doctors' quarters in the AIIMS premises. 'It helped both men and women doctors manage their families and be on call for their patients. It was just a five-minute walk and I could always check on my daughter and son,' she says. Why then are women not making a headway in STEM or becoming medical directors at AIIMS? 'In my time, we promoted women doctors and researchers who were meritorious. Their numbers have increased but so has the power of political lobbying. Maybe, that's what's holding them back,' says Dr Bhargava. She even worries that public health infrastructure continues to crumble despite technology. 'AIIMS is a research institution but its corridors are spilling over. We must broadbase a preventive healthcare network to arrest diseases. We need to increase the allocation for public health in the budget. Till it goes up to 9 per cent of our GDP, there is no hope,' she says. As she rings a brass bell to call her domestic staff for tea, she stretches her upper limbs. 'On good days, I can still do yoga. My tummy is problematic now but I have broken each of my meals into two smaller parts,' she says. She shares another privilege she had as a student in the UK. 'The India House had got students to meet Roger Moore, and I saw the handsome man before he became James Bond to you all,' she adds, laughing with a twinkle in her eye.i
Indian Express
01-06-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
The day Mrs Gandhi was shot: A reporter's diary
Four decades since one of the most tragic, violent events witnessed in post-Independence India — the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her security guards — a new memoir comes with fresh revelations. Dr Sneh Bhargava was appointed Director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on October 31, 1984 — the very day Indira Gandhi was felled by a fusillade of bullets fired by her security guards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh. In her recently released memoir, The Woman Who Ran AIIMS, the Delhi-based Dr Bhargava, now 95, graphically describes the horrific morning when 'the ink was not even dry on my appointment letter' but there, on the eighth-floor operation theatre of AIIMS, a desperate team of surgeons was fighting a 'losing battle' as they tried to save the Prime Minister's life. And for almost four interminable hours, they kept up a 'charade' that attempts were afoot to frantically try and resuscitate Mrs Gandhi. The pall of gloom of the fateful morning, the muffled wails emanating from some of the country's most powerful who lined the eighth-floor of that AIIMS corridor, have remained fresh in my mind too. I was there. I recall rushing to the PTI teleprinter in the Nehru Place office of Delhi Recorder, the magazine where I was a trainee reporter then, and reading, incredulously, the 'takes' of the Prime Minister being shot. I argued with another trainee reporter who wanted to stay in office and follow the story. 'No', I said, and zipped off towards AIIMS. As it turned out, I was among the very few reporters who managed to break several security cordons and reach the eighth floor. I remained there, just a fly-on-the-wall. By the time I left AIIMS in the evening, riots had broken out close to the hospital. Taxi stands had been burnt down. The reprisal had begun. Over several years, I kept in touch with the Indira Gandhi assassination case: I covered the trial in Tihar Jail; wrote several cover stories for Sunday, the magazine to which I had moved. In the minutes after the Prime Minister's killing, Beant Singh, the older of the two assassins, was killed by agitated guards posted at the Prime Minister's residence. Satwant Singh, the younger constable, was still alive but a predicament the media faced those days was that there was not a single photograph of Indira Gandhi's surviving assassin. I 'scooped' the picture. Days later, Satwant Singh's father, Trilok Singh, who would often travel to Delhi to meet his son's lawyers, once mentioned that when Satwant was recruited to the Delhi Police, he had got his service photograph taken at a photo studio located near Qutab Minar. When he went back to his village, Trilok Singh even got me the reference number. I located the studio, handed its owner the number and simply 'ordered' a set of passport-sized photographs of Satwant Singh. By 1990, I also wrote a book for Penguin simply titled, The Assassination of Indira Gandhi. The first chapter of that book, too, has all the minute details of the tragic drama that played out at AIIMS on October 31, 1984, and the brutality of the gunning down of Indira Gandhi. In her book, Dr Bhargava confirms that Indira Gandhi was brought in with no pulse and despite that, they put her on the heart-lung machine ( a cardiopulmonary bypass machine) and tried to revive her. She writes, 'The perfusionist was a young Sikh. The moment he heard the doctors mention that her killers were Sikh, he fled the operation theatre to save his life. The doctors had to bring in someone else.' In fact, Dr Bhargava has made it evident that even in the eighth-floor operation theatre that fateful morning, there was an apprehension that Sikhs would be targeted. She now writes about her fears, 'There was a lot to do. A huge crowd might storm the gates of AIIMS to catch a glimpse of Mrs Gandhi or barge into the premises to kill the first Sikh they saw… A bloodbath against Sikhs could not be ruled out. Sadly it did come to pass in the days that followed…' Perhaps the most important disclosure from the chapter on Indira Gandhi's assassination is the fact that just before he was whisked off to be sworn in as Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi ('he looked shocked but composed') told Dr Bhargava that he had 'warned' his mother about one of her Sikh security guards. The reason he gave her: 'because he looked suspicious'. One does not know which of the two assassins — Beant Singh or Satwant Singh — Rajiv was referring to or what he did about his suspicion. The writer, Executive Editor (News & Investigations) with The Indian Express, was a trainee reporter for Delhi Recorder in 1984
Hindustan Times
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
‘The woman who ran Delhi AIIMS': From the memoirs of institute's 1st woman chief
On the morning of October 31, 1984, Dr Sneh Bhargava, newly appointed as the first woman director of Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), walked into a nightmare. Hours after her historic promotion, the blood-soaked body of then prime minister Indira Gandhi was wheeled into the hospital's casualty ward, her saffron sari pierced by 33 bullets. 'The cold metal of the gurney against the skin would have made any patient wince,' Bhargava writes in her memoir, The Woman Who Ran AIIMS, published by Juggernaut. The scene was surreal. Gandhi's daughter-in-law Sonia, 'in shock,' managed only to whisper, 'She has been shot,' before collapsing. Senior surgeons scrambled as bullets 'tumbled out and clattered to the floor,' but hope had already vanished. 'She had no pulse,' Bhargava recalled. Blood transfusions turned desperate—Gandhi's rare B-negative blood ran out, O-negative stocks dwindled, and a Sikh perfusionist operating the heart-lung machine fled, fearing mob retribution. Though declared dead on arrival, Gandhi's death required a grim charade. With President Zail Singh abroad and Rajiv Gandhi campaigning, Bhargava was ordered to delay announcing the death for four hours to prevent a power vacuum. 'Our job... was to keep up the charade that we were trying to save her life, when in fact she was dead when she was brought to AIIMS,' she wrote. Outside, anti-Sikh riots raged, claiming thousands. Bhargava deployed police to shield Sikh staff and turned her own home into a sanctuary. 'Many of the injured were brought to AIIMS with burns caused by being doused with petrol and set alight,' she wrote — a harrowing testament to the violence that tested her leadership. Her ascent to AIIMS' helm was a battle in itself. Appointed by Indira Gandhi, Bhargava faced sexist whispers that 'a woman could not possibly handle the task.' After the assassination, sceptics warned she wouldn't last. 'You've missed your chance... they'll lobby hard to stop you,' colleagues told her. But Rajiv Gandhi, upon taking office, confirmed her appointment. 'In my time as director, I had the privilege of interacting with two prime ministers... before handing over the reins,' she wrote. Her tenure soon became a minefield of political interference. When a Member of Parliament's relatives squatted illegally in an AIIMS flat, Bhargava ordered their eviction. The politician thundered: 'I will shake the walls of the institute if you evict my kin.' Bhargava's reply was icy: 'The walls of AIIMS—and my shoulders—are not that weak. You're on the wrong side of the rules.' Long before she became director, Bhargava had witnessed how power could distort medical protocol. In 1962, as a junior radiologist, she prepared a barium drink for Jawaharlal Nehru's chest X-ray, only for security personnel to discard it, insisting she mix a new batch under their watch. The scan revealed an aortic aneurysm—a fatal ticking bomb. When Nehru died in 1964 from a ruptured aorta, Bhargava recalled grimly: 'My initial diagnosis had been correct.' But another scan in 1963 became a fiasco. Overruling her recommendation to use seasoned AIIMS staff, seniors brought in outsiders whose botched injections left Nehru's arms 'blue, purple, and angry.' He left in a full-sleeved kurta to hide the bruises. Years later, Dr KL Wig would write in his memoir: 'I chose the wrong person... many good ones were available.' Rajiv Gandhi's own visits to AIIMS mixed danger with audacity. After a Sri Lankan soldier struck him with a rifle butt during a parade, X-rays showed no fracture. 'We sent him home with painkillers,' Bhargava writes. But when his son Rahul suffered a graze from an arrow near his temple, Rajiv attempted to drive himself to AIIMS to test a new car gifted by Jordan's king. Bhargava refused. 'You cannot enter my premises driving a car without proper security... dismiss me if you must,' she told him. He relented. Beyond political skirmishes, Bhargava's memoir delivers a scathing indictment of the systemic rot in Indian healthcare. She laments the rise of kickbacks between general practitioners and specialists—a 'cycle of greed' that, she wrote, has 'murdered the family doctor.' Radiologists bribe doctors for referrals, inflating scan costs to recover the payoffs. 'Why be a GP earning peanuts when you can extort as a specialist?' she wrote. Patients are routinely misdirected. 'A backache patient sees a neurosurgeon, not a GP. The result? Unneeded MRIs, missed kidney issues—a tunnel of errors.' The human cost is grave. Surgeons have suicide rates twice the general population, yet 'pride is a physician's fatal flaw.' At AIIMS, two students died by suicide under academic pressure. 'Resident doctors work 18-hour shifts, eat junk, sleep on stools. We've normalised cruelty,' she wrote. The Covid-19 pandemic deepened that despair. 'COVID broke their spirit. Yet, how many sought help?' And yet, Bhargava found glimmers of humanity in medicine. She remembered surgeons praying in temples before complex operations. 'They'd pray harder than the patient's kin. That's care,' she wrote. But such devotion, she fears, is fading. 'Medicine is now tech-savvy but soul-starved. We're emotionally bankrupt,' she warned. Her crusade to modernise AIIMS faced resistance. In the 1970s, bureaucrats scoffed at her push for CT scanners and ultrasounds: 'India is too poor.' Her retort stung: 'We buy jets for 300 travellers' pleasure but deny millions healthcare tech.' Decades later, those machines revolutionised diagnostics. 'Technology bridges urban-rural chasms,' she argued, championing AI and telemedicine to address India's radiologist shortage. Her tenure also meant navigating internal sabotage. Dr Lalit Prakash Agarwal, a former dean, became a disruptive force in the 1970s, derailing progress and undermining colleagues. 'He stirred envy, digging for dirt in well-run departments,' she wrote. Indira Gandhi eventually sacked him in 1980 after learning of the chaos. Housing posed another major challenge. Designed for a much smaller staff, the AIIMS campus was bursting at the seams. Bhargava pushed to relocate slums occupying hospital land, but bureaucrats stonewalled her. Frustrated, she confronted Rajiv Gandhi directly during a public durbar. Her persistence paid off: 50 new flats were sanctioned for AIIMS staff. It was a testament to her grit. 'Every VIP thought AIIMS was their fiefdom. But patients came first—even if it meant staring down a minister,' she writes. At 95, Bhargava offered a final, unflinching lesson: 'Leadership is a crown of thorns. You bleed, but humility is your shield.' From navigating a prime minister's assassination to battling corruption and complacency, her story is one of resilience and principle. Her legacy lives on in the halls of AIIMS—a place that treats 1.5 million patients a year—and in her call for medicine to rediscover its lost heart. 'Where it's loved, there's love for people,' she writes. 'Be a healer, not a vendor. Or this noble profession will bleed out.'
