video transcript

ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) STORY: David Cameron on Wednesday became the first serving British prime minister to voice regret about one of the bloodiest episodes in colonial India, a massacre of unarmed civilians in the city of Amritsar in 1919. The killings, known in India as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, were described by Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the Indian independence movement, as having shaken the foundations of the British Empire. A group of soldiers opened fire on an unarmed crowd without warning in the northern Indian city after a period of unrest, killing hundreds in cold blood. Cameron's visit and expression of regret for what happened stopped short of an apology - but made it clear he considers the episode a stain on Britain's past. Dressed in a dark suit, Cameron laid a wreath at a memorial to the massacre, a terracotta-coloured stone obelisk. He then stood in front of the monument in silence for a few moments. "This is a deeply shameful event in British history, one that Winston Churchill rightly described at the time as 'monstrous'," Cameron wrote in a visitor book, referring to the former British leader.