Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi

The stone mosaic that stands at the exact location where Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in Sriperumbudur

The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the seventh and former Prime Minister of India in an explosion, took place in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, India on 21 May 1991. At least 14 others were also killed.

Rajiv Gandhi's assassination was carried out by Thenmozhi Rajaratnam, also known as Dhanu, who was found after investigations to be an LTTE suicide bomber. At the time India was embroiled, through the Indian Peace Keeping Force, in the Sri Lankan Civil War.

Subsequent accusations of conspiracy have been addressed by two commissions of inquiry, and have brought down at least one national government. The LTTE denied responsibility.

The assassination

Known as the "Path of Light", this was the path that Gandhi took before being assassinated

The assassination was carried out by the LTTE suicide bomber Thenmozhi Rajaratnam also known as Dhanu. Later, the real name of the suicide bomber came to be known as Gayatri.

Rajiv Gandhi had arrived at Chennai about two hours earlier and then was driven by motorcade in a white Ambassador car to Sriperumbudur, stopping along the way at a few other election campaigning venues. During the drive to Sriperumbudur, he was accompanied by a foreign journalist who interviewed him in the car. When he reached the venue at Sriperumbudur, he got out of his car and began to walk inside towards the dais where he would deliver his speech. Along the way, he was garlanded by many well wishers, Congress party workers and school children. At 10:21 p.m., the assassin Dhanu approached him and greeted the former Prime Minister. She then bent down to touch his feet and detonated an RDX explosive laden belt tucked below her dress. The former Prime Minister along with many others were killed in the explosion that followed. The assassination was caught on film through the lens of a local photographer, whose camera and film was found at the site. The cameraman himself also died in the blast.

Following the assassination, the investigation was given to a Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by DIG Radha Vinod Raju. Raju later was named the first head of the newly formed NIA, after the Nov 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

Seven pillars, each featuring a human value surrounds the site of the blast, at the Rajiv Gandhi Memorial in Sriperumbudur.

The Rajiv Gandhi Memorial was built at the site and is one of the major tourist attractions to the small industrial town.

Security lapses:

The Supreme Court also held that LTTE's decision of eliminating Rajiv was prompted by his interview to Sunday magazine (August 21-28, 1990), where he said he would send the IPKF to disarm LTTE if he came back to power again.

Rajiv also defended the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka accord in the same interview. The LTTE decision to kill him was perhaps aimed at preventing him from coming to power again. Thereafter, the Justice J S Verma Commission was formed to look into the security lapses that led to the killing.

The final report, submitted in June 1992, concluded that the security arrangements for the former PM were adequate but local Congress party leaders disrupted and broke these arrangements.

The Narasimha Rao government initially rejected Verma's findings but later accepted it under pressure. However, no action was taken on the recommendations of the Commission.

Despite no action, the findings throw up vital questions that have been consistently raised by political analysts. Sources have indicated that Rajiv was time and again informed that there was a threat to his life and that he should not travel to Tamil Nadu.

In fact, then governor of Tamil Nadu Bhism Narayan Singh, broke his official protocol and twice warned Rajiv about the threat to his life if he visited the state.

But Rajiv was prevailed upon by some close circle of party office-bearers (some of them are ministers in the present UPA government) who wanted him to campaign in Tamil Nadu, sources point out.

The LTTE wanted him to come to Tamil Nadu, some state Congress leaders and allies at national level were against his visit, and a close circle of party office-bearers insisted on his visit to the state. Sources point out that this angle should have been investigated by the SIT, but it was not.

Details revealed by Dr Subramanian Swamy in his book, Sri Lanka in Crisis: India's Options (2007), revealed that an LTTE delegation had met Rajiv Gandhi on March 5, 1991. Another delegation met him around March 14, 1991 at New Delhi.

"Retrospectively, these meetings assumed great significance as they were perceived as a smoke screen deliberately created by the LTTE to lull Shri Rajiv Gandhi into complacency," the interim report of the Jain Commission stated.

"The message conveyed to Rajiv Gandhi by both these delegations was that there was no threat to his life and that he can travel to Tamil Nadu without fearing for his life," said veteran journalist and political observer Ram Bahadur Rai.

The aim of these meetings was to lure Rajiv into a trap and make him complacent about his own security by using Congress leaders.

"I did a series of articles after his assassination that pointed out how, after these meetings, Rajiv became complacent about his security and broke security rules in more than 40 rallies," Rai said.

Supreme Court judgment

As per the Supreme Court of India judgment, by Judge Thomas, the killing was carried out due to personal animosity of the LTTE chief Prabhakaran towards Rajiv Gandhi. Additionally, the Rajiv Gandhi administration had antagonised other Tamil militant organisations like PLOTE for reversing the military coup in Maldives back in 1988.

The judgement further cites the death of Thileepan in a hunger strike and the suicide by 12 LTTE cadres in a vessel in October 1987. The judgment while convicting the accused, four of them to death and others to various jail terms, states that absolutely no evidence existed that any one of the conspirators ever desired the death of any Indian other than Rajiv Gandhi, though several people were killed. Judge Wadhwa further states there is nothing on record to show that the intention to kill Rajiv Gandhi was to overawe the Government. Hence it was held that it was not a terrorist act under TADA (Act). Judge Thomas further states that conspiracy was hatched in stages commencing from 1987 and that it spanned several years. The Special Investigation team of India's premier special investigation agency CBI was not able to pinpoint when the decision to kill Rajiv Gandhi was taken.

Trial

The trial was conducted under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA). The designated TADA court in Chennai gave death sentences to all the 26 accused. This created a storm in India. Legal experts were stunned. Human rights groups protested as the trial did not meet standards of a free trial. The trial was held behind closed doors, in camera courts, and the non-disclosure of identity of witnesses was maintained. Ms A. Athirai, an accused, was only 17 years old when she was arrested. Under TADA an accused can appeal only to the Supreme Court. Appeal to the High Court is not allowed as in normal law. Confessions given by the accused to the Superintendent of Police are taken as evidence against the accused under TADA. Under TADA the accused could be convicted on the basis of evidence that would have been insufficient for conviction by an ordinary court under normal Indian law. In the Rajiv Gandhi case confessions by accused formed a major part of the evidence in the judgement against them which they later claimed was taken under duress. On appeal to the Supreme Court, only four of the accused were sentenced to death and the others to various jail terms.

Jain Commission and other reports

In the Jain report, various people and agencies are named as suspected of having been involved in the murder of Rajiv Gandhi. Among them, the cleric Chandraswami was suspected of involvement, including financing the assassination. One of the accused, Ranganath, said Chandraswami was the godfather who financed the killing. Sikh Militants were also suspected. The interim report of the Jain Commission created a storm when it accused Karunanidhi and the Tamils of a role in the assassination, leading to Congress withdrawing its support for the I. K. Gujral government and fresh elections in 1998. Also other strong LTTE sympathizers Vaiko with MDMK and Thol. Thirumavalavan, with VCK have supported Congress under Sonia Gandhi in the past. However it is worth noting, that Vaiko left the UPA alliance before the 2009 election, partly due to the Sri Lankan issue. In 2006, LTTE spokesman Anton Balasingham told the Indian television channel NDTV that the killing was a "great tragedy, a monumental historical tragedy which we deeply regret."

See also

• Rajiv Gandhi assassination in popular culture
• Mission 90 Days (film)

External links

• Rajiv Gandhi Assassination - the Verdict