Though most of the main characters who figured in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case are dead and gone, the mystery associated with the dastardly action of the lTTE which planned and executed the killing of the former Prime Minister refuses to die down. Twenty-three years after the assassination of Gandhi, a lawyer who appeared for some of the prime accused has come out with a book Rajiv Gandhi Murder: Mysteries and Secrets that hit the shelves on Wednesday.
S Doraisamy, the author who is also an activist of the Thanthai Periyar Dravidar Kazhakam, a political outfit rated as a frontal organisation of Eelam supporters in Tamil Nadu, has asked some hitherto unasked but pertinent questions in the book. Doraisamy claims that many critical were purposefully obliterated and obscured, and fabricated versions of certain events were presented as truth to the public and to the court which could have had a detrimental effect on the fate of the accused.
He points out that Jameela, who has been listed as one of the accused in the assassination case, landed in India and joined the Sivarasan gang only on 16 July 1991. Sivarasan, popularly known as the one-eyed jackal, was the master brain behind the Rajiv Gandhi assassination on May 21, 1991. "Nobody knew how Jameela came to Bangalore and why she committed suicide on 19 August 1991 by consuming cyanide," asks Doraisamy.
But what stands out in the account by Doraisamy is an unanswered question ; what made Rajiv Gandhi visit Sriperumbudur on that fateful day in MayIJ Vazhappadi Ramammurthy, the then president of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee had declared on April 18, 1991 that Rajiv Gandhi would not come to Tamil Nadu till the election is over. The Congress president had addressed a mammoth rally at Chennai’s Mareena Beach and the party leaders were very impressed by the crowd which had gathered for the meeting.
The names of Congress leaders Margaret Alva and Suresh Pachauri too figure in the book which they may not cherish at this juncture. Doraisamy says the Sriperumbudur trip was planned by the AICC headquarters without keeping the State leaders in the loop. "When there was no scope of Rajiv Gandhi coming to Tamil Nadu, under whose assurances Sivarasan was waiting at Madras to execute his objectiveIJ Unless there was a secret information much earlier that Rajiv Gandhi will be coming to Tamil Nadu, Sivarasan who came to India with the intention to kill Rajiv Gandhi before the general election, he could not have waited at Madras," he writes.
"The tour programme of the former Prime Minister was finalised and released only on the evening of 18 May 1991. But the news item about the tour programme appeared in a Tamil daily on May 17 itself. How was it that even before the information was publicly released this daily got wind of the news and published itIJ Who gave this information to that particular newspaperIJ Why the TNCC president was kept in complete darkness about the tour programmeIJ"asks Doraisamy.
The lawyer-activist also questions why no probe was held to find out who helped Sivarsan in procuring the RDX as well as the belt bomb. He also points out that someone in the Congress wanted Rajiv Gandhi to spend the night at Sriperumbudur, though there was no facility in the small town to accommodate a person of Rajiv Gandhi's stature. The fact that why a public meeting was arranged at Sriperumbudur, which does not have a reasonably good venue has not been probed by the SIT CBI, the investigation agency, writes Doraisamy.
The reluctance of the AICC top bosses in New Delhi to part with the itinerary of Rajiv Gandhi and the behaviour of certain Congress leaders in Tamil Nadu were enmeshed in mystery, according to the author. He has said that son of Maragatham Chandrasekhar, the Congress candidate for whom Rajiv Gandhi flew in from Visagapattinam in Andhra Pradeshto campaign, had collected Rs 5 lakh from Sivarasan. There is another charge that Sivarasan had handed over an amount of Rs 17, 14000 to someone by name TAG.
