As the only U.S. newsmagazine with a fully staffed bureau operation in New Delhi, TIME was prepared for swift action when a wire-service ticker flashed the news of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination. Bureau Chief Dean Brelis, who had seen Mrs. Gandhi only two weeks earlier, instantly began gearing up for his own extensive reporting duties. He assigned Reporter K.K. Sharma to gather a profile of new Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and asked Bureau Manager Deepak Puri and Researcher Arti Ahluwalia to pull together background material on Mrs. Gandhi. Brelis also obtained, exclusively for TIME, the last known photos of Mrs. Gandhi, taken just one day before her death by a member of an Irish television team filming a Peter Ustinov interview with the Prime Minister.

It was 2 a.m. in New York City when Brelis phoned TIME'S Deputy Chief of Correspondents William Mader with the news. Mader immediately began shifting correspondents from other areas for a story that was sure to continue for weeks. He dispatched Nairobi Bureau Chief James Wilde to Islamabad and Bangkok Bureau Chief James Willwerth, vacationing in Japan, to New Delhi. By 7:45 a.m. Mader was in his office briefing Managing Editor Ray Cave by phone, then World Senior Editor Henry Muller. By 1 p.m., about half a day after the shooting, the first dispatches for the story began arriving from New Delhi.

In New York, a significant number of 1 those involved brought firsthand expertise to the assignment. Senior Writer William Smith, who wrote the main story, served as New Delhi bureau chief in 1975 and '76. Smith was assisted by Reporter-Researcher Naushad Mehta, who was born and reared in Bombay.

Staff Writer Pico Iyer, who wrote the stories on the Nehru dynasty and on the Sikhs, was born in England of Indian parents. He spent his vacation last summer traveling through India.

For research, he could draw on the four cover stories TIME has done on Mrs. Gandhi (two of which ran in the international editions) and the six on her father Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, from independence in 1947 to 1964.

Another contributor to the cover story was New York Correspondent Marcia Gauger, who had just completed a five-week visit to India, where she had served as New Delhi bureau chief from 1979 to 1982. Gauger met Mrs. Gandhi in 1979, when "Madamji," as she was known, was out of power. "I traveled with her on the comeback campaign trail and got to know another side of her," says Gauger. "I greatly admired her courage and her extraordinary ability to communicate with the Indian people."