Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known as Mahatma Gandhi, was assassinated at the Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti) in New Delhi on 30 January 1948. Gandhi was outside on the steps where a prayer meeting was going to take place, surrounded by a part of his family and some followers, when Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist and prominent member of Hindu Mahasabha, approached and shot him three times in the chest at close range. Gandhi was taken back inside the Birla House, where he died.