ON APRIL 13, 1919, British army officer General Reginald Dyer marched his troops into the Jallianwala Bagh in the Punjab city of Amritsar and ordered them to open fire.
The crowd assembled before Dyer’s soldiers was not asked to disperse and no warning was issued before 1,650 rounds of ammunition were unloaded.
After ten minutes of constant and targeted shooting, Dyer’s men left. Officially 379 civilians were killed, with thousands wounded. Some were left at the scene of the massacre overnight as a curfew prevented their retrieval. The bullets killed Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims, pilgrims and political speakers, farmers, traders and merchants, men, women and children. The youngest victim was an infant of just six weeks.
