India, May 23 -- 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 t...