When Indira Gandhi was wheeled into AIIMS OT: Surgeon recalls chaos

New Delhi: With the director relinquishing charge on the very day and his successor looking "completely lost", AIIMS was in a "grey zone" that fateful October 31, 1984 when a bullet riddled Indira Gandhi was wheeled in, says Dr P Venugopal who went on to operate on the then prime minister.

The veteran cardiologist in his memoir “Heartfelt” gives a detailed account of those four hours in which doctors, surgeons and the nursing staff of Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences worked tirelessly to save Gandhi.

Venugopal, chief of cardiac surgery at the time, is also the man who performed India's first heart transplant in August 1994.

"Bullets falling out all over the floor" from her blood soaked sari, the futile attempt to transfuse Onegative blood and political conversations discussing the swearing-in of the next prime minister in the corridors of the hospital ... 39 years later, it all comes to vivid recall.

"I was shaken to see the slender figure on the bed; blood spouted from her abdomen and she was drenched completely in her own blood. The delicate face was pale, as though all blood had left the body, and it continued to flow in spurts and pooled around her,” the former AIIMS director writes in his book released last week.

Gandhi was assassinated on the lawns of her residence by two of her security guards. The assailants had fired 33 bullets at her, of which 30 hit her; 23 passed through her while seven were lodged inside.

"I saw that they (doctors) were trying to transfuse the rare O-negative type, which seemed a futile exercise to me as what was going in was coming out from the ruptured body," says the 81-year-old, describing the scenes as "chaotic to say the least".

“A sea of AIIMS personnel milled around. I moved towards Dr HD Tandon, who was relinquishing his charge as director that very day, and Dr Sneh Bhargava, who was taking over. They looked completely lost; clearly, the grey zone of who was director that day paralysing any decision or action. They both turned to me, mutely seeking guidance," he adds As chief of cardiac surgery, Venugopal says he was looked up to for advice by most and had to take an immediate decision. "... I ordered her to be taken to the OT so we could stem the profuse flow of blood ... The urgency was so important I did not even wait for the signed consent form and simply took the lead."

His final plan of action: "To stem the bleeding by putting her on the bypass machine and clamping the descending aorta so that no blood flowed to the abdomen, which was riddled with bullets."

They worked on the patient for four hours and Venugopal remembers changing his OT scrubs thrice as they kept getting blood-soaked. Around 2 pm, they tried to take her off the bypass but were not able to revive her.

"A feeling of sick despair settled deep in my stomach, as I stepped out to inform her people ... Rajiv Gandhi, who was touring the eastern part of the country, was on his way back, and the consensus was to wait for his arrival," he recalls.

Venugopal, credited with over 50,000 heart surgeries, maintains to this day that if the former PM had been "covered or dragged to cover, she would have survived the first couple of bullets. (PTI)