Rajiv Gandhi Assassin

Release of Rajiv’s Assassins–India’s Gordian Knot

When a nation seeks to leave behind its disastrous military involvement in another country and as a consequence, the assassination of its former prime minister, then that is reason enough to pause and think. Without admitting it, India is seeking to purge itself of its role in Sri Lanka in the 1980s. This is evident from the way everyone wants to move on from its worst outcome, the death of Rajiv Gandhi.

Actually, India is struggling to forget two events. His mother Indira Gandhi ordered the attack on the Golden Temple in 1984. Like the Sikh sentiment, the Tamil sentiment was hurt. Both paid with their lives. Mercifully, violence post her assassination against the Sikh community did not get repeated among the Tamils because Rajiv’s killing was seen as a ‘foreign’ conspiracy. Decades on, the two are being consigned to unpleasant history, best forgotten.

Rajiv’s ‘crime’ was that he signed a pact with Sri Lanka’s wily president JR Jayawardane in 1987 and dispatched to the island Indian troops under the banner of the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF).

From a modest 3,000, this force exceeded 100,000 at one time. But it was unable to tame the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who, well-armed and highly motivated, enjoyed support from the local Tamil populace, the Tamils across the Palk Strait in India, and the Tamil diaspora in a dozen nations. Their fighters were able to defy both the Sri Lankan forces and the IPKF.

Inevitably, the Indians, trapped by the agreement, got caught in the crossfire between the Tigers and the host government. The triangular tussle – political, diplomatic and military – became India’s Vietnam or the more recent Afghanistan. When the IPKF returned, losing 1,000 soldiers and many maimed, there was no ceremonial welcome.

In the Lok Sabha elections some months on, Rajiv was seen as winning, with prospects of returning to power. A worried LTTE decided that he must die. It succeeded on May 21, 1991. A suicide bomber exploded herself while welcoming him at an election rally. The LTTE itself met a gory end in 2009 when the Lankan forces annihilated an unaccounted number of Tamil fighters, but also unarmed civilians.

Of those involved in Rajiv’s assassination, India’s Supreme Court convicted some to death and some more to life imprisonment. It concluded that the terrorism charge did not stand under the law as it then existed. In the intervening years, however, no effort has been made to update that law in light of terrorism’s global spread that has not spared India. The death sentences were later commuted.

Last month, the court released the last batch of convicts. Finding the convicts’ behaviour ‘satisfactory’, it released them in batches, first in May and the rest last month. The Supreme Court first commuted the death sentence and found it prudent to release them.

ALSO READ: ‘Tamil Identity Is Central To Efforts For Nalini Release’

Among them was Nalini, an Indian who participated in the LTTE-hatched conspiracy. On being released with much fanfare, Nalini showed no remorse. She claimed to be innocent, although various courts convicted her on many of the 250 charges levelled against her.

Witness the cynical political drama. She claimed to belong to a “Congress family”, and that her family members “cried and did not eat for three days” to mourn Rajiv.

But she neither wept nor surrendered to the police after the crime. She was on the run for several days till she was caught with her husband. Old records show all this, but her mushy sentiments went unchallenged, and she was off to London.

She skirted a media question if she planned to meet the Gandhis. Apparently, her political conviction allowed no such courtesies. She and her fellow convicts would not be free but for the Gandhis’ forgive-and-forget stand. The Gandhis sought an end to this saga of bloodletting. Priyanka had a tearful meeting in jail with Nalini some time back. The convicts could have been hanged or imprisoned for life. But no government, including those of the Gandhi-led Congress, ruling for 15 of those 30 years, desired it.

Now, see various players in this gory tale. When India stood defeated, it was a victory for successive Tamil Nadu governments irrespective of political hues. Tamil sentiment, built up against the north historically, played out against the rest of the country. Both national parties, Congress and BJP, have done little to counter it. That explains their silence and the Tamils’ renewed sense of victory on the convicts’ release. It neither conforms to the Congress’ “idea of India” nor to BJP’s “one nation” slogan. For a multi-ethnic nation, this sets the wrong precedence.

Among the Tamil politicians, Jayalalithaa had turned from an angry opponent of the LTTE to its sympathiser since it appealed to the Tamil voters. She outdid the Karunanidhi family to win the state’s two-horse race. It is hardly surprising that Karunanidhi’s son MK Stalin, the current chief minister, commended and received Nalini. He hugged AG Perarivalan, another convict earlier sentenced to death. It is now Stalin’s turn to consolidate the Tamil ‘sentiment’.

New Delhi’s current government, not burdened with Tamil baggage, has maintained silence throughout the entire saga. But it has sought a review of the final judgment, not out of love for the Gandhis, nor to strengthen the law to curb terrorism. Its concern is that the Centre had no role in a case that was pushed by Tamil Nadu. But what did it do when consulted by Gujarat? It cleared the release of those convicted for life in the 2002 rape and murder of the family of Bilkis Bano. The two cases bear similarities, raising the question of whether justice has been done. Minority opinion perhaps, but it exists, that it has not been done.

Although the Gandhis had long ago “forgiven” the killers, Congress has called the Supreme Court verdict “totally unacceptable and erroneous.” It has ‘disagreed’ with Sonia, Rajiv’s widow and its longest-serving president. It is preparing to challenge the verdict. The effort may, in the final run, prove as futile as the one in the Bilkis Bano case, and worse, could get embroiled in politics. Short of allies, Congress needs to keep Stalin and Tamil Nadu on its right side. It’s realpolitik at work.

Nobody has talked of the families of the 14 people who died in the blast that killed Rajiv. These, like any conflict, remain collateral damages, to be silently suffered.

From Prateep Philip, Rajiv’s security detail surviving with a thousand pellets in his body to the highest in the land, each for their own set of reasons, stated or implied, think that this is time and an opportunity to move on. Time has taken its toll and none seems interested in justice that could stir up more problems than solutions.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Tamil Identity And Nalini's Release

Tamil Identity Is Central to The Movement For Nalini’s Release

Sathish Thozhar, a Chennai-based socio-political activist, explains the events that led to release of convicts in Rajiv Gandhi Assassination case

A decade ago, it would be unimaginable that any of the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case would ever be able to walk out of the prison barracks as a free person. But, miraculously for some, it has happened. The Supreme Court has ordered the release of three Indian nationals and four Sri Lankans invoking Article 142 of ‘complete justice’.

How did it happen? Was it the will of the Tamil people that set in motion the wheels of justice? Call for release of political prisoners is not a new occurrence. Release of Dalit prisoners in Telangana and of Sikh militants in Delhi and Punjab are still being heard in Indian courts. These demands are not just a human rights issue but carry along larger social movements like Dalit justice, sub-nationality sentiments or anti-imperialist campaigns.

Coming back to the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, while law agency saw it an act of terrorism, a section of masses considered it an act of retaliation for the IPKF (Indian Peace Keeping Force) atrocities in Sri Lanka. The latter was believed to have taken place at the instance of then prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Initially, the case was dealt with under TADA and all 26 accused were given death sentences in 1996. Many legal experts found it shocking as many of the convicts were not even primary accused in the charge sheet. This triggered a movement for saving 26 Tamils’ lives that could be termed as the first part of this three-decade story.

The effort resulted in a judgment which acquitted 19 among the 26 accused. Among the res seven convicts, four – Perarivalan, Nalini, Shanthan, and Murugan – were given death penalty and three – Robert Payas, Ravichandran, Jeyakumar – sentenced to life imprisonment.

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This kindled hope. There is a mild sympathy among the masses for Nalini, as a young mother. Sonia Gandhi herself never opposed the clemency demand for Nalini which made late K Karunanidhi to move forward with it. Tamil Nadu Government used Article 161 i.e. exclusive right of State for amnesty but the then governor Mrs Fathima refused to sign on the resolution. The state government moved to High Court and succeeded in reducing the penalty of Nalini to life sentence in 2008.

The backdrop for the real momentum in this movement happened in the later part of 2008 when the war against LTTE in Sri Lanka had given rebirth to the solidarity movement of Eezham Tamils in the post Rajiv assassination scenario. The brutal war against LTTE was propagated as war against terrorism by Sri Lankan state but it was nothing short of Tamil genocide. The Lankan Army did not spare even children, elderly people, pregnant women and non-conflict zones like hospitals, schools etc.

Every walk of society from students, lawyers, and teachers, to IT professionals in Tamil Nadu took to streets and urged the Indian government to intervene but, the Congress-led Centre was on the other side supporting the Sinhala- Buddhist supremacist militarily, diplomatically and in every aspect to continue the war till its end. The laymen in Tamil Nadu perceived it as an act of revenge by Sonia led congress against the assassination of Rajiv.

The political class in Tamil Nadu then thought it had failed in saving thousands of Tamils but we must save the three on death row in Indian jail. When days were being counted for the hanging, a young female comrade Sengodi from a tribal community in Kancheepuram, self-immolated, demanding the release of the three Tamils. It became a highly emotive issue. The Jayalalithaa government passed a resolution demanding their release through article 432, 433 of CrPc for which a consultation with the Union Government is needed.

Meanwhile, Madras High court stayed the death penalty with appearance of Senior Counsel Ram Jethmalani. The Union Government moved to the Supreme Court to challenge the verdict and the bench of Sadhasivam confirmed the historical judgment of reducing the sentence from life to death.

When DMK came to power, it followed into the footsteps of the previous government. Both DMK and AIADMK included in their election manifesto the release of seven prisoners during the 2014 General Election and again in 2016 State assembly election.

Congress, BJP could not rally the people for their demand of keeping them in prison till their death. People got convinced for the release of these prisoners in the backdrop of Mullivaikal massacre backed by Indian Government that they perceived as an act of revenge against Rajiv assassination. That is in fact a trade-off between the people of Tamil Nadu and the Indian establishment in their protracted struggle for their right to self-determination.

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None of the human rights movement will succeed without coupling it with a larger political movement and this movement for the release of life prisoners is linked with Tamil nationalist movement. We are happy to see them walk out of jail and begin a new life.

As told to Nityanand Gayen