Rajiv Gandhi assassination
The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India, occurred as a result of a suicide bombing in Sriperumbudur, Chennai, in Tamil Nadu, India on 21 May 1991. At least 14 others, in addition to Rajiv Gandhi, were killed.[3] It was carried out by Thenmozhi Rajaratnam (also known as Kalaivani Rajaratnam or Dhanu), a member of the Sri Lankan separatist organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)(But prabakaran never accepted the charge against himself directly of killing the Rajiv Gandhi). At the time, India had just ended its involvement, 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.
Assasination
Rajiv Gandhi was campaigning for the upcoming elections along with G.K. Moopanar in southern states of India. On 21 May, after campaigning in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, his next stop was Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu. About two hours after arriving in Madras (now Chennai), Gandhi was driven by motorcade in a white Ambassador car to Sriperumbudur, stopping along the way at a few other election campaigning venues. When he reached a campaign rally in Sriperumbudur, he left his car and began walking towards the dais where he was to deliver a speech. Along the way, he was garlanded by many well-wishers, Congress party workers and school children. The assassin, Dhanu (Thenmozhi Rajaratnam), approached and greeted him. She then bent down to touch his feet and detonated an RDX explosive-laden belt tucked below her dress at exactly 10:10 PM. Gandhi, his assassin and 14 others were killed in the explosion that followed, along with 43 others who were grievously injured. The assassination was caught on film by a local photographer, Haribabu whose camera and film was found intact at the site despite him also dying in the blast.
Victims
Apart from the suicide bomber Thenmozhi Rajaratnam, several people were killed in the blast on 21 May 1991:
- Rajiv Gandhi, Ex Prime Minister of India
- Dharman, police constable
- Santhani Begum, Mahila Congress Leader
- Rajguru, police inspector
- Chandra, police constable
- Edward Joseph, police inspector
- K.S Mohammed Iqbal, police superintendent
- Latha Kannan, Mahila Congress worker, who was with her daughter Kokilavani
- Kokilavani, ten-year-old daughter of Latha Kannan, who sang a poem to Gandhi immediately prior to the blast
- Darryl Jude Peters, attendee and observer
- Munuswamy, former member of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Council
- Saroja Devi, seventeen-year old college student
- Pradeep K Gupta, personal security officer of Rajiv Gandhi
- Ethiraju
- Murugan, police constable
- Ravichandran, Black Cat commando
Around forty-three bystanders including police sub-inspector Anusata Daisy were also injured in the explosion.
Security lapses
The Supreme Court held that the decision to eliminate Gandhi was precipitated by his interview to Sunday magazine (21–28 August 1990), where he stated that he would send the IPKF to disarm the LTTE if he returned to power. Gandhi 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 contributed to the killing.
The final report, submitted in June 1992, concluded that the security arrangements for the former PM were adequate but that the 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 raised vital questions that have previously been consistently raised by political analysts. Sources have indicated that Gandhi was repeatedly informed that there was a threat to his life and that he should not travel to Tamil Nadu. In fact, the then governor of Tamil Nadu Bhism Narayan Singh, broke official protocol and twice warned Gandhi about the threat to his life if he visited the state.
Dr Subramanian Swamy said in his book, Sri Lanka in Crisis: India's Options (2007), that an LTTE delegation had met Rajiv Gandhi on 5 March 1991. Another delegation met him around 14 March 1991 in New Delhi.
Journalist Ram Bahadur Rai wrote that:
Other Main stories of the Assassination
In a report published on 30 October 2012 in DNA, K Ragothaman, former chief investigator of the CBI, talks about his new book Conspiracy to Kill Rajiv Gandhi: From the CBI Files and tells the reporter that while the CBI had started a preliminary inquiry in which MK Narayanan, former West Bengal Governor and former Intelligence Bureau director, was named a suspect in hiding evidence, the case was buried by the CBI SIT Chief, D.R. Karthikeyan.
Some people(Public union leader-Pyar Singh Dimmi) also say that the Mastermind of this crime is living freely at 10 Janpath. He and some other people have also said given this statement to CBI officer DSP Praveen Kumar at CBI Head Quarter CGO Complex at 2021.
In 2007 he (Pyar Singh Dimmi) also did the protest at Jantar Mantar Loksabha, New Delhi.
He also wrote various letter to different Ministers in 2007. And also to the President of India, Prime Minister of India, Priyanka Gandhi daughter of Late Rajiv Gandhi. After getting one of the letters from the Pyar singh Dimmi she went to meet the Nalini in one of the jail of Tamil Nadu newspaper like Punjab Kesari confirmed this thing while some other newspaper say that she did not go to meet her.
In 2007 Pyar Singh Dimmi also met with the Subramanian Swamy at the residence of Swamy in Nizamuddin. In which he gave letters and some other document related to this crime to swamy. In which it was decided that it required to change the central government for taking furthur action.
After that again in 2007 Pyar Singh Dimmi also met with Yogi Adityanath at North Block, New Delhi, Baba Ramdev at Burari, Delhi and Anurag Thakur at Himachal Sadan, New Delhi.
In an interview in 2017, Justice K.T. Thomas had said that "there were serious flaws" in the CBI's investigation in case, particularly related to the seizure of Rs 40 lakh in cash from the convicts, which led him to believe that the probe exposed "an unpardonable flaw" in the "Indian criminal justice system".
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 M. Karunanidhi the former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu 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. Vaiko left the UPA alliance before the 2009 election, partly due to the Sri Lankan issue. In the 2001 Norway peace talks, Prabhakaran told the press that the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi was a sorrowful event. 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".