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SRI LANKA: THE UNTOLD
STORY
Chapter 48: Gandhi's murder: Widespread
fallout
By K T Rajasingham
The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi reverberated
beyond the national borders of India. Brutal deaths in
the Nehru family were becoming all too regular. Sanjay
Gandhi had died in a plane crash, Rajiv's mother Indira
Gandhi had been gunned down. And now it was the turn of
Rajiv Gandhi. The untimely death was a tragedy, but so,
too, was the manner in which the murder inquiry was
conducted.
There was an attempt, right from the
beginning, to hide something. It is still perceived that
D R Karthikeyan was chosen to hide and shield the real
perpetrators involved in organizing and arranging the
gruesome murder, rather than to bring to book the real
culprits.
At the time of the murder, Karthikeyan
was the head of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)
in Hyderabad, in Andhra Pradesh State. After the murder,
P V Narasimha Rao, from Andhra Pradesh, succeeded Rajiv
Gandhi. He was on the verge of retiring from politics at
that time, but it was said that he was brought to the
forefront by the god-man, Chandraswami.
Earlier,
in March 1991, Rao flew to the Texas Heart Institute, in
the US, to undergo bypass surgery. When he returned to
India, he was getting ready to retire. He had packed his
bags at 9, Motilal Nehru Marg, but suddenly Rajiv Gandhi
died and he was catapulted into the country's highest
seat. Within weeks, his skin cleared, his cheeks glowed
and his gait straightened. The man began to look
younger. After Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, Narasimha
Rao was chosen to lead the Congress party, and when
Congress won a plurality in parliament, later that year,
Narasimha Rao became prime minister.
Son of P
Ranga Rao, P V Narasimha Rao (Pamulaparti Venkata
Narasimha Rao) was born on June 28, 1921 at Karimnagar.
He studied in Osmania University, Hyderabad, Bombay
University and Nagpur University. A widower, P V
Narasimha Rao is the father of three sons and five
daughters. A man of many interests, he likes music,
cinema and theater, but his special interest lies in
Indian philosophy and culture, writing fiction and
political commentary, learning languages, writing poems
in Telugu and Hindi and keeping abreast of literature in
general.
Being an agriculturist and an advocate,
he joined politics and held some important portfolios.
He served as a minister (1962-71) and chief minister
(1971-73) in the Andhra Pradesh state government, before
his election to the Indian parliament in 1972. A member
of the Indira Congress party, he held (1980-89) several
cabinet posts under Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi,
including minister of home affairs and minister of
external affairs (1980-84).
During Narasimha
Rao's tenure of office as Prime Minister, Karthikeyan
investigated the murder case and was given a free hand
on condition that, he took care of what was expected of
him to take care of. According to Rohan Gunaratna, "In
Sri Lanka, the National Intelligence Bureau under Zerny
Wijesuriya, the Criminal Investigation Department under
M D A Rajapakse, the Directorate of the Military
Intelligence under Brigadier Lionel Balagalle, assisted
the Special Investigative Team (SIT) of the Indian
Government, to make the major breakthrough in the Gandhi
assassination. Subsequently, the SIT CBI team was able
to apprehend several LTTE cadres associated with the
assassination in Madras, including Mirsudar [in Tamil,
this means the hereditary landed proprietor] N Shanmugam
alias Jeyaraj, an Indian Tamil residing in Vedaranyam,
who buried 121 cases of high explosives, wireless
communication equipment and petrol cans on behalf of the
LTTE. P Ravichandran alias Ravi alias Pragasam, an
Indian Tamil, who received Indian Rs 1 million from
Pottu Amman and Sivarasan, while in Jaffna in December
1990, to strengthen the LTTE sponsored Tamil National
Retrieval Force (TNRF) comprising of Indian Tamils,
trained in Jaffna, left for Sri Lanka soon after the
death of Sivarasan. He returned to India with gold
biscuits, explosives, arms and ammunition, wireless
equipment and cyanide capsules, in September 1991, to
build the TNRF. Even though he was arrested in early
1992, the LTTE continues to covertly assist in the
strengthening of the TNRF, which they intend to use to
carve out a separate Dravida Nadu. Subsequently, India
charged Prabhakaran and 40 other Sri Lankan Tamils and
Indian Tamils with the murder of Rajiv Gandhi." -
Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka - pages 464-465.
Natarajan, the senior Indian advocate, led the
defense team for all the accused, except one. He was
ably assisted by Sunder Mohan, B Gopikrishnan, S
Doraisamy, V Elangovan, N Chandrasekharan, T Ramdass and
R Jayaseelan. Meanwhile, Siva Subramanium, assisted by
Thanan, appeared for Shanmugavadivelu, the 15th accused.
When the verdict in the court was announced, a
somber silence was felt in the residence of S Doraisamy,
one of the defense lawyers. There, relatives, friends
and some Dravida Kazhagam (DK) members were huddled in
groups, discussing the "harshness" of the judgment.
"Even in the Nuremberg trial, the death sentence was not
given to all the offenders," said the downcast
Doraisamy. "Nowhere in the world has capital punishment
been given to all the accused in a criminal case," he
added. According to him, the court had "failed to see
that the actual offenders involved in the murder, who
are already dead."
"The relatives of the accused
were expectedly bitter," said Arumai, aunt of
Perarivalan, alias Arivu. She further queried, "If all
the 26 had conspired, how come there were no leaks at
all? We feel this judgment was given only to enhance the
prestige of the SIT." For the investigators, the first
breakthrough came with the recovery of photographer
Haribabu camera, which lay intact on his body for the
entire night of the tragedy, before being retrieved by
the investigators the next morning.
Meanwhile, S
Doraisamy, the defense lawyer, in one of his interviews
with Vijaya Television, in Madras, February 2, 1998,
said, "There is no evidence to accuse that they were
directly involved. They don't know anything.
"The members of the family of G Perarivalan
[Accused No18 - Indian National] are followers of
Periyar [E V Ramasamy Naicker, September 17, 1879-
December 24, 1973 - a Tamil social revolutionary and a
radical humanist and the founder leader of the Dravida
Kazhagam]. I know that family well. After Perarivalan's
arrest, they came, approached and appealed to me to
defend him. As I appreciated and respected their love
for the Tamil language, I agreed to take up the case.
The case was against 13 Indian Tamils and 13 Sri Lankan
Tamils. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam did not
spend any money at all, for these accused in defending
themselves in the court case filed against them. I
appeared in the court after August 1994. As for my legal
charges, the court authorized the payment of Rs.750 per
day, under the legal-aid scheme and paid me for the
three years, I appeared in the case.
"Conspiracy, awareness and help to execute are
the three basic charges against the accused in this
case. The argument of the police was merely based on
speculation. When Prabakaran was in Delhi, he told V
Gopalaswamy that, through the Indo-Lanka accord, Rajiv
Gandhi has stabbed the Tamils in their back. Based on
this statement, the case was built around and
successfully proceeded speculatively. There was no
witness to link anyone directly to the murder.
"It was only a guess that, Sivarasan and
Prabakaran were together. After the murder, Sivarasan
never even attempted to go back to Sri Lanka. But,
Ravichandran [Accused No 16 - Sri Lankan national] one
month after the murder went to Sri Lanka and returned to
India after staying in Sri Lanka for two months. "The
police, who investigated the case, should have come up
with the real killers. I am of the opinion that someone
else should have arranged Sivarasan for this murder. I
think those who arranged the murder through him must
have summoned him to Bangalore. This is how I foresee
his fateful visit to Bangalore.
"The case is a
bundle of contradictions. All the 26 accused are those
who strive for their daily survival. They made use of
the TADA Act to rope in the accused in this case."
As Doraisamy stated, the case was purely based
on speculation, confession and letter leads. The first
letter was one allegedly written by Dhanu to Prabakaran,
on May 10, 1991, from LTTE's Kodungaiyur hide-out. It
that letter it was stated that Dhanu thanked Prabakaran
for entrusting her with the "important" task. Also,
Dhanu gave details of her successful dry-run on V P
Singh, in Madras on May 8.
The second piece of
evidence is the letter dated September 7 from Gundu
Santhan, who was the LTTE's chief coordinator in India,
to Prabakaran. It was intercepted when the Indian navy
arrested an LTTE courier, Irumborai. Excerpts:
"My dear elder brother,
I am writing this
letter amidst crisis. But we have not lost confidence.
The CBI seems to have come to know everything about us,
following the arrest of so many of our members. All
Pottu Amman's boys got nabbed and that eventually led to
the death of Raghuvaran [Sivarasan]. The arrest of
Chinna Santhan helped the CBI to know about who killed
Padmanabha.
After seeing so many arrests, I had
to distribute cyanide to all our boys. As a result of my
instruction/order, 25 of us have died. The situation
here is just like what it was in Jaffna during the IPKF
operation. Like our people hated to give the Indian
soldiers water, the same treatment is being meted out to
our activists.
I suggest that we have a smaller
team to work here. I have waited several nights, but no
boat has come. How do I send goods? After the death of
Rajiv, we were promised that boats will come once the
election was over. But, no boat came.
Send boats
and wireless sets before some more of us get caught. If
I get wireless set we can identify the arrival or the
departure point. Or, tell Irumborai in detail. The
arrest of Vardhan cut off my last link with you. Pottu
Amman's boys do not carry my message to you. The likely
arrest of Kolatur Maniyam is worrying me, as that would
lead to many other Indians. The CBI cannot catch me.
Have faith in me. Yours,
Santhan"
The second
letter of Santhan to Prabhakaran, dated September 7,
1991, was rejected as "not admissible in evidence" by
Justice D P Wadhwa in his Supreme Court verdict of 1999
[page 189 of Justice Wadhwa's verdict].
It was
alleged that these letters in the case were forged and
introduced by the SIT to enhance their points against
the accused persons. Furthermore, through these letters,
the SIT managed to cover up the deaths of several
involved in the case. Also, confessions were extracted
from the accused by the police, using third degree
methods, but Karthikeyan had time and again denied the
use of such measures.
M N Natarajan, the leading
defense counsel, said that confessions of the accused
could not be taken into consideration. His arguments
were:
(1) All these confessions had been retracted
by the accused having being taken under coercion and
under police influence;
(2) Sufficient time was not
given to the accused before recording the confession.
They were given only a few hours to reflect if they
wanted to make any confession;
(3) Under the
provisions of the code, as amended by TADA, the police
took full remand of the accused for 60 days and when a
day or so before the remand was to expire, the accused
were made to give their confessions. There is, thus,
every possibility of the confessions being extracted. It
cannot also be ruled out that the confessions were
obtained by causing physical harm to the accused and
playing upon their psychology;
(4) The confessions
of Nalini (A-1) and Arivu (A-18) were otherwise
inadmissible as mandatory provisions contained in
Sections 15 of TADA and Rule 15 (3) of TADA were
violated; (5) All the accused were kept together in a
building called Maligai [palace in Tamil] situated at
Green Pass Road, Madras, which were the headquarters of
the CBI. Firstly, remand was taken for one month, but no
confessions came to be recorded. Further remand of one
month was taken. During this period, Poonamallee
sub-jail was converted into a police station. All the
accused were transferred there and again kept together
under the control of the special investigation team of
the CBI. Legal principles required that the accused
should have been kept separate and sufficient time
should have been given to them for their minds to
reflect if they wanted to make a clean breast of the
whole thing;
(6) It is settled in law that, a
confession of an accused cannot be used for
corroboration of the confession made by a co-accused.
The rule of prudence so requires; and
(7) All these
confessions were post-arrest confessions and confession
of one accused cannot be used against the other, even
with reference to Section 10 of the Evidence Act. It
could not be said that the object of the conspiracy was
not accomplished by the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi
and that the conspiracy was still in existence.
The confession made by Athirai, the 8th accused,
points to the connection of Mahataya alias Mahendrarajah
Gopalaswamy, the deputy leader of the LTTE in the
assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Justice Wadhwa's
observation in page 171 of his verdict about Athirai is
of special interest. Justice Wadhwa stated:
"Athirai (A-8), a hard core LTTE militant girl,
came to India in the last week of April 1991 in an LTTE
boat from Sri Lanka. Athirai (A-8) in her confession
said that she got specialized training in the LTTE
camps. She was assigned the work of gathering
intelligence on the operations and movements of Sri
Lankan army and other rival organizations like EPRLF,
PLOT, etc. Reports she prepared would be handed over by
her to Mahathaya, another LTTE leader."
Athirai
had made her confession on August 29, 1991 (page 46 of
the verdict). Here is another "smoking gun" that the
then LTTE deputy leader, Mahathaya, was intentionally
overlooked by the SIT officials when the charge sheet on
Rajiv's assassination was finalized in May 1992. The
reason for overlooking Mahataya is mysterious, and this
writer wishes that D R Karthiyean, the SIT chief, would
have given an explanation.
Mahattaya's possible
and sole connection in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi
was propounded by this writer in an article that
appeared at first in 'The Independent,' an English daily
from Bangaladesh, dated September 19, 1998, under the
headline "Who Killed Rajiv Gandhi?"
The same
article was revised and published in the "Weekend
Express," published from Colombo, dated October 17,
1998, with photographs of this writer with Chandraswami,
the god-man, under the caption: Rajiv murder: A wider
conspiracy?" The article is given at the end of the
chapter as an annex.
Meanwhile, the LTTE had
been proscribed since May 1992, in India under the
Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (1967), as an
unlawful association, see notification No SL330 (E)
dared May 14, 1992 as published in the Gazette of India
Extraordinary Part II - Sec. 3 sub section (ii) dated
May 14, 1992. The proscription has been continuously
renewed at the end of every two-year period.
According to Gundu Santhan, in the alleged
letter written by him to Prabakaran, he stated that as
many as 25 LTTE militants had died during the
investigation of the assassination case. The occurrence
of the deaths was a factual statement, but whether these
so-called militants and others either committed suicide
to conceal secrets or were silenced by the SIT is still
a debatable issue. Among those who allegedly committed
suicide were Sivarasan - One-eyed Jack, the standby
assassin Subha, Nehru, Gundu Santhan, Suresh, Dixon,
Amman, Kirti and Jamila - all accused in the case.
Mirasdar Shanmugham, an LTTE sympathizer, was
alleged to have committed suicide by hanging himself.
A majority of the LTTE cadres who died, bit
deadly cyanide capsules. Indian newspapers reported
that, "The SIT and CBI had to overcome a blind alley
every time they encountered a suicide death." Some of
the suicide notes left behind blamed the SIT for
relentlessly pursuing them. In an interview that
appeared on February 1, 1988 in the Sunday Times of Sri
Lanka, D R Karthikeyan, the chief of the SIT, said, "The
very stringent sentence awarded to the accused in the
Rajiv Gandhi assassination case by a Madras court on
Wednesday should be a warning to terrorists who want to
dismember India and create chaos." Here are excerpts:
Q: The judge has given the death sentence to all
the 26 accused of conspiracy to kill Rajiv Gandhi. What
is the significance of this judgment?
A: The
judgment shows that, India is not a soft nation, which
can be played around with easily. It is a strong warning
to terrorists at a time when India is threatened by
terrorism. I remember Jawaharlal Nehru once said, "If
India wins, all of us win, and if India loses, all of us
lose.''
Q: One of the defense counsels said that
giving the supreme penalty of death was grossly unfair
when those on trial were not the actual killers and when
only some of them had indulged in specific, overt acts.
What is your reaction?
A: It would be improper
for me to comment on the sentence. All I can say is that
the judgment flowed from the facts placed before the
court. As for the penalty, the Indian penal code makes
it very clear that in a case of murder, participating in
the conspiracy to murder, is as bad as committing the
murder. Moreover, the person these people had conspired
to kill was no ordinary man.
Q: The defense
counsel says that the prosecution had not established
the link between the accused and the crime, and that the
link with the LTTE was not established, except through
some generalities about the antagonism between the LTTE
and Rajiv Gandhi.
A: The court was given
voluminous evidence in each case. We would not file a
charge sheet if there was no clinching evidence. The
links with the crime and with the LTTE were clear in
every case.
Q: Can you recall the high points in
the investigations?
A: When they were handed
over to me on May 26, 1991, it was a blind case. We had
no hope of detection. The killer had blown herself up on
the spot. No one was caught red handed. It was not like
the Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Gandhi assassination
cases, in which the killers were caught red handed. Even
the intelligence agencies said that they had no clue.
But I had faith. I knew that faith and hard work would
help me out.
Q: What was your approach to the
investigations?
A: I took up the case on two
conditions; that there would be no political
interference and that I would not use third degree
methods. Once these were accepted, we set about
collecting evidence systematically, guided by the time
honored principle that the crime should lead to the
criminal and not vice-versa.
Q: What were the
low points?
A: You know what sort of problems
Delhi created!
Q: The defence even now claims
that the link with the LTTE was not established except
in a presumptive way. What would be your comment?
A: When I took over the investigations, I was
hoping that the LTTE had not done it. While on visits to
Sri Lanka I had seen what they could do. But as the
investigations proceeded, everything pointed to the LTTE
and nobody else. Excerpts from a telephonic interview
with S Doraiswamy, a leading defense lawyer in the case.
Q: What is your reaction to the judgment?
A: This is the first time in Indian judicial
history that a court has sentenced all accused in a
murder case to death. In the absence of any specific,
overt act on the part of most of the accused, the
judgment was totally erroneous.
Q: What do you
think of the investigations?
A: The SIT had not
established conspiracy. There was no evidence at all.
The prosecution had not presented evidence to connect
each of the accused to the crime. There was no evidence
to show where the belt bomb was built and how the RDX
was procured. The accused were not aware of their
involvement till they were arrested! According to the
prosecution itself, till the dry run at the public
meeting addressed by V P Singh in Madras on May 7, 1991,
only three of them knew about the plan to assassinate
Rajiv Gandhi. These were Sivarasan, who master-minded
it, Subha, his accomplice, and Dhanu, the suicide
bomber. Dhanu was killed in the blast and Sivarasan and
Subha committed suicide while being hounded by the SIT.
Nalini, for example, did not know that Rajiv Gandhi was
going to be killed, even on the day he was to be killed.
According to her confessional statement, even at the
election meeting in Sriperumbudur, all that Subha told
her was that Dhanu was going to create history that day.
The death sentence for photographer Subha
Sundaram was too much, because his only crime was that
he had tried to retrieve his camera, which he had lent
to Haribabu for covering the Rajiv rally. (According to
the prosecution, Haribabu, who was killed in the blast,
had been engaged to shoot the assassination for the
LTTE's album).
Q: Was the link with the LTTE
established?
A: Here again, the prosecution
could not establish it except in a general way, saying
that the killing flowed from strained relations between
the LTTE and Rajiv Gandhi, after the Indo-Sri Lanka
accord and the subsequent IPKF-LTTE war. It is widely
held that D R Karthikeyan and the Special Investigating
Team had implicated Prabakaran through the Confessions
of 2nd and 3rd accused. The prosecution team had
presented confessions of 2nd accused Santhan and 3rd
accused Murugan, as evidence for implicating Prabakaran
as one of the conspirators to the assassination.
Regarding the confession of Santhan, Justice Wadhwa, in
his verdict observed, "Santhan (A-2) is a Sri Lankan
national. He knew Sivarasan as they both belonged to
same town in Sri Lanka. According to Santhan (A-2)
important decisions like murder of anybody could be
taken only by Prabhakaran." [page 75 of the verdict].
Regarding the confession of Murugan, Justice
Wadhwa's in his verdict announced, "Murugan (A-3) when
asked by Sivarasan the reasons for the killing of Rajiv
Gandhi, he replied that Kasi Anandhan [prosecution
witness 242] had met Rajiv Gandhi at Delhi and was told
that the meeting was very cordial and if Rajiv Gandhi
came to power he would help the LTTE movement.
Prabhakaran showed the letter written by Kasi Anandhan
(PW-242) suggesting cordial relations to Pottu Amman and
said that people like Kasi Anandhan should be removed
from the movement. When Sivarasan met Prabhakaran he
told him that 'We must teach a lesson to Rajiv Gandhi
through the girls since the IPKF dishonored women'. From
this Murugan (A-3) understood that the decision to
assassinate Rajiv Gandhi was taken by Prabhakaran."
[page 75 of the verdict]
Meanwhile, seven years
after the killing of EPRLF leader K Padmanabha and 14
others, the court that tried the case delivered the
verdict in which, 15 of the 17 accused, including a
former DMK minister and a former home secretary of Tamil
Nadu were acquitted.
In a judgment delivered on
November 8, 1997, the two judges acquitted 15 of the 17
accused on the ground that the prosecution had "not
proved beyond any reasonable doubt" the allegations
against them. The designated court two judge, Arumuga
Perumal Adithan, convicted the other two accused, Chinna
Santhan and Anandaraj, for offences under the Terrorist
and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, or TADA.
Among those acquitted were former Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Minister Subbulakshmi
Jagadeesan, her husband Jagadeesan, former State Home
Secretary R Nagarajan, Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam (MDMK) leader V Gopalsamy's brother V
Ravichandran and advocate D Veerasekaran.
Chinna
Santhan was declared guilty under Section 3 (3) of TADA
for advising, abetting and facilitating the crime. He
was sentenced to six years of rigorous imprisonment and
fined Indian Rs 2,000. If he did not pay the fine he has
to undergo a further year of imprisonment. Anandaraj was
found guilty under Section 3 (4) of TADA for harboring
Gundu Santhan, one of the accused in the case. Anandaraj
was sentenced to five years and a fine of Indian Rs
1,000 was also imposed, with failure to pay drawing a
further six months of imprisonment.
Of the 26
who were listed as accused in the original charge sheet
filed by the Tamil Nadu Special Investigation Team
(TANSIT), Sivarasan and Gundu Santhan (who were among
the accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case) were
dead. Kiruban escaped from custody. Six of them - Pottu
Amman (who is also an accused in the Rajiv Gandhi
assassination case), Daniel, David, Dileepan, Ravi and
Nagaraja - were declared proclaimed offenders, since
they absconded. Since a trial cannot be held in
absentia, the remaining 17 faced the trial, which was
held at a specially-built court at Poonamallee, about 30
kilometers from Chennai.
The 17 accused were (in
the order in which they were listed in the charge
sheet): (Accused-1) Chinna Santhan, (A-2) Vicky, (A-3) R
Nagarajan, (A-4) Rajan alias Kunjan, (A-5) T V
Marudanayagam, (A-6) Jayabalasingham, (A-7)
Chandravadana (Jayabalasingham's wife), (A-8) Vasanthan,
(A-9) Anandaraj, (A-10) Sebastian, (A-11) Mahendran,
(A-12) Gunaraja, (A-13) Irumborai, (A-14) D
Veerasekaran, (A-15) Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan, (A-16)
Jagadeesan and (A-17) Ravichandran.
Thirteen
leaders of the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation
Front (EPRLF), including its Secretary-General K
Padmanabha, were shot dead in Chennai on June 19, 1990,
allegedly by a killer squad of the LTTE. Two local
residents were also killed in the attack.
The
EPRLF leaders were holding a meeting in a flat at
Kodambakkam, when an armed group of LTTE men burst into
the room and sprayed them with bullets. The assailants
also exploded hand grenades. The murders sent shock
waves across Tamil Nadu and caused widespread revulsion
against the killers.
The LTTE's animosity
towards the EPRLF arose after the signing of the
Indo-Lanka accord on July 29, 1987, with the EPRLF
accused of being pro-Indian. The animosity increased
after hostilities broke out between the Indian armed
forces and the LTTE on October 10, 1987. The IPKF was
deployed in the Tamil majority North-Eastern province of
Sri Lanka under the Indo-Sri Lanka agreement. When the
Sri Lankan Government announced that elections to the
North-Eastern Provincial Council would be held on
November 1988, the LTTE demanded a boycott of the polls.
It warned that anyone taking part would be declared a
traitor and punished.
The EPRLF contested the
elections and formed a government led by A Varadaraja
Perumal. After the Indian army pulled out of Sri Lanka
on March 24, 1990, the North-Eastern Provincial Council
collapsed and EPRLF leaders fled to India. The killers
struck on June 19, 1990, killing Padmanabha and other
leaders. During that period the DMK government, led by M
Karunanidhi, ruled the state.
The All-India Anna
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government headed by
Jayalalitha Jeyaram, which came to power after the
dismissal of the DMK government, and after a brief spell
of president's rule, set up TANSIT in December 1991, to
probe the murder of the EPRLF leaders. TANSIT filed the
charge sheet on August 12, 1992. According to the charge
sheet the murders were an act of revenge against EPRLF
cadres, whom the LTTE believed had worked against it,
with the help of the Indian armed forces, after
Varadaraja Perumal became the Chief Minister of the
North-Eastern Provincial Council.
The charge
sheet said that, the conspiracy was hatched in Jaffna,
Tiruchi and Madras. According to TANSIT, Pottu Amman
allegedly worked out the plot in Jaffna, in February
1990. On his instructions, Chinna Santhan came to
Chennai and joined an engineering technology institute
which was near the flat, where the EPRLF leaders lived.
The charge sheet further alleged that a squad consisting
of Sivarasan, David, Dileepan, Daniel and Ravi, arrived
in Tamil Nadu, on June 10, 1990 and that on being
informed by Chinna Santhan that Padmanabha and other
EPRLF leaders were holding a meeting in the flat, the
assailants reached the spot in a car with AK-47 rifles
and hand grenades. They shot dead Padmanabha and others.
The group is alleged to have fled in a Maruti car driven
to Pillaiyar Thidal village in Thanjavur district the
next day and escaped in a boat to Jaffna.
In his
271-page judgment, Adithan said that, although 206
witnesses were examined, there was no direct evidence to
prove that, the first eight in the list of accused got
together either in Jaffna or Tiruchi or in Chennai and
made preparations to kill Padmanabha. The judge said,
"There is absolutely no evidence on record to show that,
A 1 to A 8 had committed the offense of conspiracy
[under Section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code)".
The prosecution case against former Home
Secretary R Nagarajan was that, he had instructed higher
police officers not to apprehend the assailants, so
that, they could escape. But the judge said, an
Inspector-General of Police and a Deputy
Inspector-General of Police, who were examined, did not
support the case of the prosecution. The judge said
that, there "is absolutely no evidence on record" to
show that, Nagarajan was connected with the Padmanabha
murder case or that he took part in terrorist
activities.
The judge rejected allegations that,
Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan, former DMK Minister and her
husband Jagadeesan, had harbored Gundu Santhan in their
farm house near Erode, in September-October 1991. He
also rejected similar charges against Ravichandran and
Veerasekaran. The judge said that these four were not
liable for offenses under Section 3 (4) of TADA.
About Chinna Santhan, the judge said that, he
had "knowingly abetted, advised and facilitated the
commissioning of the terrorist act committed by the
killer squad". According to the judge's order, a
four-member killer squad reached the spot of the crime
in a car. While two of the killers stood outside the
flat, where the EPRLF meeting was on, the other two
entered it and opened fire indiscriminately. Chinna
Santhan (who had positioned himself near the flat,
before the killer squad arrived) left the scene of the
crime, along with the assailants, immediately after the
incident. The judge said that the witnesses had
identified Chinna Santhan. It was clear from evidence
that, AK-47 rifles and bombs containing RDX explosive
were used by the killers, he said.
The case
against Anandaraj was that, he was a staunch follower
and sympathizer of the LTTE and that he harbored Gundu
Santhan in his house. "It is clear from documentary and
oral evidence" that Anandaraj had allowed Gundu Santhan
to stay in his house in Tiruchi, the judge said. He was
therefore, held guilty under Section 3 (4) of TADA for
harboring Gundu Santhan. (Gundu Santhan committed
suicide by swallowing cyanide, when the police tried to
arrest him in connection with the Rajiv Gandhi
assassination case.)
The judge said that, the
escape of the killer squad was a "slur" on the
efficiency of the police department. He said that the
Tamil Nadu Government had a moral obligation to
compensate the victims of this "ghastly massacre, even
though no amount of money can console the kith and kin".
The judge added, "This court appeals to the Government
to give at least Rs 2 lakhs, as compensation to the
legal heir of each of the victims, who lost their
lives."
Reacting to the judgment, Subbulakshmi
Jagadeesan said that, it proved that the Jayalalitha
Government had filed "false charges" against her and
that, it was a case of political vendetta. She demanded
that Jayalalitha quit politics.
Nagarajan said
that, his acquittal proved that the charges against him
were "false" and "completely politically motivated". He
added that, he had undergone "six years of [mental])
torture", suffered financial loss and lost four years of
service in government.
Meanwhile, the Jain
Commission reports drew attention to the similarities in
the assassinations of Rajiv Gandhi, on May 21, 1991 and
EPRLF leader K Padmanabha a few months earlier, on June
19, 1990, in Chennai. Jain pointed out that, the same
set of killers were used by LTTE supremo V Prabhakaran
and his intelligence chief Pottu Amman (both convicted
in absentia) and that, after killing Padmanabha, they
had a free run in Tamil Nadu due to the patronage of the
then Tamil Nadu Government under M Karunanidhi.
Interestingly, SIT chief D R Karthikeyan
consistently refused the demand that the SIT should also
investigate the Padmanabha murder, saying the focus of
the Rajiv assassination investigation would be diluted.
Justice Milap Chand Jain's final findings of the
conspiracy to assassinate the former Prime Minister of
India, Rajiv Gandhi had adduced evidence of the god-man
Nemi Chand Jain, better known as Chandraswami, as having
links with CIA and Mossad, and through them with the
LTTE. He was among the 21 "suspects," whom the SIT had
failed to investigate, the Commissioner complained.
Justice Jain, who had reportedly devoted a whole section
to Chandraswami, seems convinced that, the latter was
involved. He quotes intelligence reports and government
communications to add weight to his case. The god-man
was constantly conspiring to overthrow Rajiv Gandhi,
when he was Prime Minister, and had sworn to "kill" him,
the report said. But Justice Jain does point out that,
there are gaps to be filled and missing links to be
found. Hence the need for a fresh probe.
Justice
Jain also mentioned of the "close" relations between
Rajiv Gandhi's successor, Narasimha Rao, and
Chandraswami, and how, Narasimha Rao, as premier, had
told a minister that he should not insist that
government show the panel all documents on Chandraswami.
Justice Jain has linked Chandraswami with the
infamous and now defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce
International (BCCI) in which arms dealer Adnan
Kashoggi, several terrorist groups, and intelligence
outfits like the CIA and Mossad had accounts. The money
in it was used for terrorist operations and political
assassinations. The report is quoted as saying that $4
million of Mr Kashoggi's money was transferred to the
LTTE's accounts. Justice Jain had said this on the basis
of a 130-page document prepared by US Senator John Kiri.
Justice Jain's interim report created a
political storm in India, by bringing down the United
Front Government led by I K Gujral in November 1997,
when it said that the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister at that
period of time, M Karunanidhi, and the DMK, the then
ruling party in Tamil Nadu, was also part of the
conspiracy to kill Rajiv Gandhi.
The Congress
party clamored for action against the DMK, which was
then part of the Gujral government in New Delhi. Its
insistence, led to the fall of the Gujral government and
subsequent elections brought a coalition led by the BJP
to office.
In the final report, Justice Jain has
said only "very few" Tamils in Tamils Nadu had supported
the LTTE. But, he said that, the DMK chief, who is also
the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, M Karunanidhi and his
Minister, Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan, should have been
questioned. The latter is listed among 21 additional
suspects, whom the SIT had failed to investigate.
Among the 21 are top LTTE arms procurer K
Pathmanathan, (KP), and top leaders Kittu alias
Sathasivan Krishnakumar and Baby Subramaniam. The SIT
source said that, over the seven years it functioned,
the Jain commission had entertained many such amazing
theories and used the confusion thus created, to get its
term extended from time to time.
The Bharatya
Janata Party government appointed the Multi-Disciplinary
Monitoring Agency (MDMA) and asking it to probe the
roles of five persons, Karunanidhi, Chandraswami, Janata
Party president Subramaniam Swamy, former DMK minister
Subbulakshmi Jagadeeshan and the LTTE's arms procurer
Kumaran Padmanabhan.
The MDMA would be headed by
an additional director of the Central Bureau of
Investigation and would have representatives of the
Intelligence Bureau, Research and Analysis Wing,
Military Intelligence, Air Intelligence, Naval
Intelligence, Enforcement Directorate, Directorate of
Revenue Intelligence and other central agencies.
The MDMA's major task was to find out whether
Chandraswami, who had fallen foul of Rajiv Gandhi in the
late 1980s and had an international network including
arms dealers, mercenaries, Hollywood stars, Indian
politicians and businessmen, had carried out his threat
that he would "finish off'" and liquidate Rajiv Gandhi.
Chandraswami is the target of a vocal section of
Congress leaders because he had close access to prime
ministers P V Narasimha Rao and Chandra Shekhar. The
MDMA will have a major hurdle in firmly establishing
Chandraswami's involvement in a conspiracy hatched to
eliminate Rajiv. That is because key witness Rajendra
Jain, a freelance journalist, who had told the
Commission that, he had all the evidence linking
Chandraswami to the assassination, was found dead in
suspicious circumstances, in an east Delhi house. The
police are investigating his murder.
While
accepting the conclusion of the SIT headed by D R
Karthikeyan that the LTTE had carried out the
assassination through its human bomb, the Commission's
final report said, "Taking the entire evidence, material
and circumstances brought on record into consideration,
a doubt does arise regarding Chandraswami's complicity
and involvement. So the matter requires further probe."
The commission quotes evidence of former cabinet
secretary Zafar Saiffullah who said Chandraswami had
links with Mossad and the CIA, and that the government
had received intercepts of wireless communication
between Israel (where Mossad is based) and Jaffna (where
the LTTE was operating till recently) which established
Chandraswami's involvement. But the Vajpayee government
denied the existence of such wireless intercepts,
contradicting the former cabinet secretary.
But
money transactions in Chandraswami's name and his links
with international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and the
now defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International
(BCCI) have made the commission point an accusing finger
at the god-man.
Congress leader Rajesh Pilot,
whom Chandraswami unsuccessfully tried to defeat twice,
has a simple solution: he asked Home Minister L K Advani
to arrest Chandraswami and question him intensively.
The whole conspiracy will be known, he said,
without any time consuming investigation of the people
and plot behind the assassination.
Atal Bihari
Vajpayee's cabinet, which debated for a long time on
whether to include Karunanidhi among the persons to be
investigated by the MDMA, found enough scope in the
interim and final reports of Justice Jain. Subsequently,
Vajpayee's government dropped the investigation of the
DMK Chief and the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, most
probably after some sort of secret political
understanding. Before concluding the section on the
assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the "beneficiary" factor
has to be analyzed.
It was believed that
Chandraswami was the biggest beneficiary of Rajiv's
assassination and that the Rao-Chandraswami links were
responsible for trying to scuttle the commission. It is
accepted that the biggest beneficiary of the
assassination was the one who clandestinely arranged the
murder and who still remains a mysterious personality.
Though it is claimed that the LTTE might have
been involved, they seem to have been the biggest
losers. They have been isolated in Tamil Nadu and all
over in India and many other countries in the world. The
supporters and sympathizers of the LTTE are branded as
pariahs in Tamil Nadu - as political and social
outcasts, thus loosing the power-base they used to enjoy
all the years, before the assassination.
It was
also stated in the Jain Commission report that, further
proof had come to the commission about the "rear base"
and the facilitation being given to the LTTE cadres
during the DMK regime. The report states that, this has
been further substantiated by reports of the Subsidiary
Intelligence Bureau (SIB) Madras, which was given to the
commission after the submission of the interim report.
The reports dealing with the period 1989-1991 traces the
movement and arrival of arms on the coasts of Tamil
Nadu, as well as give proof of the logistical and
medical assistance that was readily given to the LTTE
cadres.
The above excerpts drawn from the Jain
Commission Reports clearly indicate that, LTTE was using
Tamil Nadu, as its "Rear Base," in its protracted armed
conflict with the Government of Sri Lanka. As a result
of the killing of Rajiv Gandhi, the LTTE has today lost
this base, which remains a serious handicap in its
battle.
The murder of Rajiv Gandhi has failed to
be of beneficial effect, even to the 100,000 and more
Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who were then living in more
than 121 special refugees camps, scattered almost all
over the coastal districts of Tamil Nadu. Also, the
refugees who lived in Tamil Nadu without accepting any
subsidy from the Indian government, too, have not
benefited by the murder.
Then who did benefit?
The first beneficiary was Jayalalitha, who went from a
vivacious sex-bomb in the cinema world, to the Chief
Ministership of Tamil Nadu, at the State Assembly
elections, that followed. Jayalalitha was born in Tamil
Nadu with a Kannadiga family background. Her mother and
aunty, were famous cabaret dancers in the Tamil cine
world and both danced to fame, baring partially their
voluptuous bodies to satiate their craze-filled fans in
Tamil and in the other South Indian language films.
Jaylalitha followed her mother's footsteps and was a
model, dancer, actresses, a chubby sex-bomb; before
entering the political arena of Tamil Nadu.
Earlier, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam (AIADMK) was founded by the matinee idol M G
Ramachandran, the popular cinema actor in South India,
around 1972. After breaking away from the DMK,
Ramachandran, popularly called MGR, started a new
political outfit to challenge the DMK President, M
Karunanidhi. He called his party Anna DMK. The parting
of MGR from DMK had a serious impact on the ruling DMK.
Ramachandran, a calculating personality, he
chose his characters carefully in films, always
depicting himself as a hero, the friend of the poor and
the down-trodden.
MGR gradually dominated Tamil
Nadu politics and arranged his party in an organized
manner. He and M Kalyanasundaram of the Indian Communist
Party, made allegations against the DMK, of commission
and omission by the DMK government (then Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi was behind them). Subsequently, the DMK
Government was dismissed on the grounds of corruption
and a Commission of Enquiry (Sarkaria Commission)
constituted to look into the charges.
MGR's
active participation in politics, even prevented Cong
(O) leader Kamaraj Nadar from coming back to power.
After the lifting of the internal emergency, the MGR
with the CPI, as an alliance partner, wrested power in
Tamil Nadu. The MGR-Indira combination worked out well
and bagged all parliament seats, leaving a lone seat to
the DMK.
Though MGR was the uncrowned king of
the party, he was not able to control it and keep it
intact. Groupism in AIADMK was a known story, everywhere
with different dimensions. MGR inducted his film heroin,
one of his live-in-partners, J Jayalalitha, into his
party and made her a Rajya Sabha (Upper House) member
and propaganda secretary of the party. He brought her
from oblivion to politics by providing her a position in
the AIADMK, and he made use of her in the party
campaign. MGR was known for his sudden decisions and
ideas and also for his penchant for beautiful young
cine-actresses.
When Jayalalitha bade farewell
to films in the late 1970s, (or rather, was compelled to
quit), people in Tamil Nadu thought that it was the end
of the vivacious actress and that they had seen the last
of their chubby heroine. But, she was back with a 'bang'
within five years, looking delectable in party-color
saris, cooing to babies in villages, listening
responsively to petitioners at the party office of the
All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), a
shining mascot for the then ageing chief minister M G
Ramachandran.
After MGR's death she was
humiliated by members of the departed leader's family,
who saw her as a threat. Even during the official
funeral ceremony, Jayalalitha tried to climb up on the
gun-carriage, which carried the coffin. She was
immediately forcefully pulled down by other party
members. After MGR's sudden death, the party was
divided, with one group under his wife Janaki and the
other under Jayalalitha - the live in lover -
sinnaveedu, as it is popularly called in Tamil.
But the group's in-fighting resulted in the party's
popular two-leaf symbol being frozen by the Election
Commission. The defeat of both factions and DMK's
reemergence in the 1989 state elections made them once
again unite. The frozen symbol was restored to the
united AIADMK under Jayalalitha's leadership and the
party reemerged victorious, just after the assassination
of Rajiv Gandhi, giving it a massive majority and
leaving the DMK with one seat for its party's president,
M Karunanidhi.
Jayalalitha , as an opposition
leader in 1989, was tenacious and vitriolic in giving a
fight to Muthuvel Karunanidhi and the DMK government.
She insulted and assaulted on the floor of the State
Assembly, when she crossed to the Treasury bench and
tried to grab the official version of the budget speech
whilst being read by Karunanidhi, who was also the
Minister of Finance. In the melee that ensued, her sari
was torn and her hair disheveled. Contumelious
Jayalaitha, though disgraced and shaken, pointed to her
matted hair and torn clothes and vowed that, she would
enter the Tamil Nadu assembly, only if Karunanidhi was
ousted from power.
This vow she managed to
fulfill after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.
Therefore, it is openly evident that, Jayalalitha, who
spared no opportunity in imposing her feminine power by
forcing even ministers of her party to genuflect at her
feet, was the one who benefited the most from the death
of Gandhi. The other visible beneficiary was Narasimha
Rao, who was suddenly made the Prime Minister of India
after Rajiv Gandhi's demise. The last person who
benefited most was the god-man Chandraswami. This writer
had the chance of being with Chandraswami at a birthday
party hosted by Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi arms dealer
in Bangkok, Thailand in 1994.
Annex
Rajiv murder: A wider
conspiracy?
Articles by K T Rajasingham
Who
Killed Rajiv Gandhi? - September 19, 1998, The
Independent Bangladesh
Rajiv Murder: A Wider
Conspiracy - October 17, 1998, Weekend Express, Sri
Lanka.
Rajiv Gandhi's assassination
investigation will possibly take a different turn, when
the Indian government sets up a Multi-Disciplinary
Monitoring Agency (MDMA) in the near future, under the
Central Bureau of Intelligence (CBI).
L K
Advani, the Indian Union Home Minister, tabled the
long-waited final report authored by Justice Milap Chand
Jain in the Indian parliament, on July 31, 1998,
together with the Action Taken Report (ATR). The inquiry
report failed to answer numerous important questions:
"Who killed Rajiv Gandhi, the former Prime Minister of
India, on May 21, 1991, at Sriperumbdur?" "Who ordered
the killing?" "Who and whom were behind it?" These
questions loom in everyone's mind. They need truthful
replies. Instead, the commission recommended a further
line of investigation.
According to the
recommendation, the Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency
was to conduct further investigations. What was that
MDMA supposed to investigate? The very objective of the
setting up of the MDMA is ambiguous. Is it to
investigate a new conspiracy theory? Or will it look for
something different from the one uncovered by the
Special Investigative Team and the criminal case filed
in the Designated Court 1, in Poonamallee, which after
the trial, sentenced all 26 accused to die and also
alleged that the killing was done on the orders of LTTE
(Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) supremo, V
Prabakaran?
A Division Bench of the Supreme
Court of India was scheduled to start the hearing of the
appeal filed by these accused. The proposed MDMA is to
investigate the activities of Chandraswami, alias Nemi
Chand Jain, the ageing god-man, Subramaniam Swamy, the
maverick leader of the Janata Party, Muthvel
Karunanidhi, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, for
providing the "rear base" to the LTTE and other accused
in the Rajiv Gandhi murder case.
On
Chandraswami's involvement, the report said, "Taking the
entire evidence, material and circumstances, brought on
record into consideration, a doubt does arise regarding
his complicity and involvement."
So the matter
requires a further probe. "The god-man's relationship
with the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and the
Sultan of Brunei imputed the theory that the
assassination was master-minded by sinister foreign
forces, through a cabal of domestic and international
terrorists. When questioned by the commission,
substantial material emerged of his criminal
antecedents, his role in the Lackhubai Pathak scam and
of collaborating with Rajiv Gandhi in their joint
endeavor to malign the former Prime Minister V P Singh,
through the St Kitts bank paper forgeries.
The
Jain Commission further observed that the LTTE's
principal arms producer, Kumaran Pathmanathan, alias
"KP", a cousin of Prabhakaran, held accounts with the
Bank Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), a
Pakistani international bank, now defunct, as did Adnan
Khashoggi, and even the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA)!.
Accordingly, the commission concluded
that Saudi arms dealer Khashoggi to be a key player in
the supply of arms to the LTTE. This might have led the
commission to speculate on the LTTE's connection with
Chandraswami, Adnan Khashoggi, the CIA and Mossad. The
Jain Commission speculated on the possible CIA-Mossad
linkages in the assassination.
Yasser Arafat, of
the Palestinian Authority, conveyed to Muchckund Dubey,
the former Indian Foreign Secretary in June 1991, "If
one was looking for a link, it was the CIA-Mossad-LTTE
link."
The linkage, Arafat pointed out, turned
into a serious subject for speculation. It further
remarked about the communication monitored by N V
Vishan, Joint Director, Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau
of Tamil Nadu, who informed his high-ups of a
communication from Kumaran Pathmanathan (KP) to
Prabhakaran, dated July 12, 1990, about what a CIA
official had told one of his contacts, "He knew what was
required by us and it should be done in such a way that
was helpful to both." Three weeks later, according to
the report, Prabhakaran asked KP for surface to air
missiles (SAMs) and related firing equipment. Through
this report, the commission established a CIA-LTTE
linkage, but what is unclear is the (real) connection
with the assassination. Also the missing link of the
Chandraswami-Premadasa-Mahattaya's connection, about
which the commission failed to establish conclusively.
In the case of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination,
before concentrating on several outside agencies and
terrorists organizations, the Indian government failed
to go into several related issues. The important
question is "Why did the successive governments that
came to power fail to go into the Sri Lankan debacle, a
national shame, where 1,555 IPKF personnel were killed,
2,987 injured and expended more than Indian Rs. 1850
crores?
Also, a few more supplementary questions
arose: Why does the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)
continue to harbor and provide protection at Jaipur,
Rajasthan, to Varatharaja Perumal, the former chief
minister of North-East Provincial Council and spend
millions of Indian rupees on his safety and upkeep? Why
does the Indian intelligence agency RAW continue to
harbor a Sri Lankan Tamil militant organization in
India, patronizing, providing training, weapons and the
financial support?
The organization of the
LTTE
The Action Taken Report, tabled by the
Bharatya Janata Party (BJP) government, and the
appointment of the MDMA, provided a different
perspective to the already accepted theory of blaming
the LTTE for the assassination.
While the probe
might shift further afield, our analysis still centers
on the LTTE. Therefore, it is appropriate to go into the
organization of the LTTE and its functional capacity,
during two different periods - before and after Rajiv
Gandhi's murder. To come to terms with the situation
that prevailed herewith we undertake a full analysis.
Our key player in this probe is Gopalaswamy
Mahendrajah, or the one popularly known as Mahattaya,
who joined the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
in 1978, along with Kittu alias Sathasivam Krishnakumar.
Prabhakaran inducted Mahattaya as the Vanni region
commander and Kittu to command the Jaffna region. From
the very beginning, Mahattaya clashed with Kittu. On the
night of March 31, 1987, unidentified assailants fired
and lobbed a powerful grenade on the motor car carrying
Kittu, in Jaffna. Kittu sustained injuries - his right
leg was severed while receiving shrapnel wounds.
After the incidents, Major Aruna, alias
Selvaswamy Selvakumar of the LTTE, went berserk. He
fired his M-16 at the innocent captives from the rival
Tamil militant groups at Kandan Karunai prison, which
housed nearly 65 prisoners. All but three fell to
Aruna's madness. The LTTE high command did not approve
of the carnage. When Aruna died at the battlefront, they
decided not to include his name in the martyrs' list.
But, the LTTE learned in 1994 that the maiming
of Kittu was an inside job and the attack was carried
out on Mahattaya's order, by his right hand confidante
Visu. Meanwhile, the LTEE had already included Visu's
name in the martyrs' list after he was gunned down,
along with two others, on July 13, 1989, after the
assassination of A Amirthalingham, the Secretary General
of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), and S
Yogeswaran, an ex-member of parliament from Jaffna. To
this day, Visu's name remains on the list.
Prabhakaran appointed Mahattaya as the leader of
the Makkal Munnani, (Peoples Front), a political
organization of the LTTE. Earlier, in 1988, during the
military campaign against the Indian Peace Keeping
Forces (IPKF), Prabhakaran also appointed him as the
deputy leader. During the campaign against the Indian
forces, the LTTE withdrew from Jaffna, hid themselves in
the sprawling Vanni region, Mahattaya was at
Putur-Vannivilankulam, Prabhakaran at Alampil. The
leader and the deputy had been unable to meet in person
since late 1990s due to the intensity of the India
offensive.
Arrest of Mahattaya
On May
3, 1989, LTTE representatives were airlifted from a
jungle hide-out in Mullaithievu for talks with
Ranasinghe Premadasa, the then Sri Lanka President.
Later, Mahattaya took charge of the LTTE team on the
orders of its leader. Mahattaya's stay in Colombo
provided the opportunity for RAW operatives to establish
contact with him.
S Chandrasekeran, alias
Chandran, the additional secretary of the cabinet
secretariat and the high-powered officer in charge of
the RAW operations in Sri Lanka, met Mahattaya secretly
in Colombo.
On the orders of Mahattaya, a
hit-squad under Visu's command arrived in Colombo for
clandestine operations. Simultaneously, on the orders of
the Tiger supremo, another commando group left Alampil
for Colombo, with orders to weed out anti-LTTE elements
in Colombo. While the negotiations with the government
were on, Mahattaya ordered Visu to execute the
LTTE-imposed death sentence of February 1987 on
Amrithalingham.
After the murder of
Amrithalingham, Pottu Amman, alias Shanmugalingham
Sivasankaran, smelt foul play and he began to monitor
closely the activities of Mahattaya. The intelligence
unit, Aiyyana Group, broke into and monitored the
powerful two-way radio communication emerging from
Mahattaya's base. On the information provided by the
intelligence unit, Prabhakaran relieved Mahattaya of the
leadership of the Makkal Munnani, and from the deputy
leadership. Prabhakaran sent him on a special assignment
to the Eastern province. After General Denzil
Kobbekaduwa and others died in a land mine blast on
August 8, 1992, the military balance began to tilt in
the LTTE's favor. Prabhakaran recalled Mahattaya, gave
him an inactive position, looking after the refugees'
welfare and injured LTTE cadres. He was also allowed to
retain his 75-strong bodyguard unit.
Gradually,
events began to work against Mahattaya, Baby
Subramaniam, one of the founding leaders of the LTTE,
became deputy leader.
Pottu Amman and his group
sustained serious injuries, but narrowly escaped death,
when an unidentified assailant lobbed a bomb into the
vehicle in which they were traveling, near Kopay. The
situation worsened when the LTTE became more suspicious
of Mahattaya. They found out that he had betrayed Kittu
to the Indian and Sri Lankan intelligence agencies,
leading to Kittu's death by suicide, in the Palk
Straits, in January, 1993.
Thereafter, the LTTE
high command urgently assembled a high-powered
hit-squad, including all their leading commanders,
namely Sornam, the leader of the elite Tiger commando
group, Balraj Charles Anthony's Regiment, Thamil Selavan
alias Dinesh, the Commander of the Jaffna Region. So or
Soosai, the commander of the Sea Tigers, and others.
Pottu Amman, the intelligence chief, led the
quickly assembled hit-squad. The special squad launched
its operation to arrest Mahattaya on March 31, 1993
before dawn and overpowered without resistance the
sentries and entered the bases at Kondavil and Kokuvil.
When the squad entered the domestic quarters,
Mahattaya was inside the toilet. As he emerged, Sornam
told him, "Annan [elder brother] wants you. Come with
us," Unsuspecting, Mahattaya told him, "You better go, I
will follow you." Sornam reiterated, "No, you have to
come now. Annan wants you immediately." Mahattaya,
agitated a little, said, "I told you to go, I will
come."
Sensing the mood inside the living room,
Pottu Amman, who stood outside the main entrance,
entered the room along with the other commanders and
said, "No, you must come at once." When Mahattaya saw
Pottu Amman and the others he sensed the seriousness and
told his wife without losing his equanimity, "Do not
worry, whatever decision Annan takes, it will always be
the right one," and followed them. They took him to an
intelligence unit base at Chavakachceri for
interrogation.
Unveiling the covert
operations
At the time of Mahattaya's arrest his
trusted lieutenant, K D Suresh, was away at
Putur-Vannivilankulam to convey Mahattaya's orders to
their accomplice, planted as one of Prabhakaran's
guards.
The regular LTTE cadres arrested Suresh
and other fugitives and turned them over to the
intelligence unit. A week before the arrest of
Mahattaya, the LTTE's intelligence unit spotted in the
Jaffna city a handicapped ex-LTTE cadre, called
Engineer, alias Manickavasagam Mahendrajah. One of his
legs had been severed during the Jaffna Fort military
campaign.
The LTTE discharged him and he went to
Chennai by boat to obtain a prosthesis. Pottu Amman
ordered his men to watch Engineer's activities. They
arrested him on the third day, while he was returning
from Mahattaya's base at Koandvil, and took him in for
questioning.
At the interrogation, it became
evident of the ploy to de-stabilize the LTTE. According
to Engineer, he was arrested on suspicions in connection
with Rajiv Gandhi's assassination while he was living in
Chennai. The RAW agents, who had a full dossier on him,
spotted him and initiated confidential discussions.
Subsequently, they sent Engineer, via Colombo, with a
message for Mahattaya. They instructed Mahattaya to dump
Prabhakaran and to be ready to assume the leadership of
a North-East autonomous region. After the meeting with
Engineer, Mahattaya dispatched Suresh with instructions
to arrange the assassination of Prabhakaran.
At
the investigation it became clear that Suresh, who
arrived at Puthur-Vannivilakulam, could not establish
contact with their hit man to convey Mahattaya's urgent
order.
After the arrest of Mahattaya, President
Ranasinghe Premadasa was killed on May 1, 1993 by an
LTTE suicide bomber. The murder sparked off much
speculation about Premadasa's link to Rajiv Gandhi
Gandhi's assassination conspiracy.
Unfortunately, Premadasa's link with Mahattaya
and Chandraswami did not surface. C Rajadurai, a former
Minister and High Commissioner for Sri Lanka in
Malaysia, was alleged to be the go-between between
Premadasa and Chandraswami. But this aspect still
remains shrouded in a thick veil of secrecy.
In
the meantime, the LTTE cadres in prison at Vellore,
Tamil Nadu, staged a dramatic escape. The LTTE
dispatched two speed boats to bring back 14 escapees
safely, and gave them a rousing heroes' welcome.
Meanwhile, the LTTE office in Jaffna received a letter
regarding the jail break scam staged by the RAW,
delivered by someone who returned from India, after
visiting his son, who was arrested and detained at the
Vellore prison.
On receipt of the letter, the
intelligence unit alerted the leadership. Within a few
days they arrested those 14 masqueraded as heroes. At
the inquiry it became clear that RAW operatives
regularly visited them and held lengthy discussions and
finally they agreed to work for the RAW.
According to RAW's instructions, the 14 escapees
were to free Mahattaya and also arrange the
assassination of Prabhakaran. It came to light that one
Susilan, a confidante of Mahattaya, was the one who
planned to assassinate Prabhakaran. Susilan, after his
arrest, admitted that he was instructed to shoot down
Prabhakaran.
After a long and protracted
investigation, the LTTE court-martialed Mahattaya,
condemned him to die, but the execution was delayed. In
the later part of 1996 they took him around a few bases
in the Vanni area and showed him to their cadres to
prove that he was alive. Recently, a journal in Sri
Lanka came out with the news that the LTTE had executed
Mahattaya and handed over the body to his wife for
cremation. This news item needs further confirmation.
(But according to Adele Balasingham, in her The Will
to Freedom, "Mahathaya [Mahendrarajah] the ill fated
deputy leader of the LTTE, who was executed for treason
in 1994 …" - page 60)
Inconclusive
myth
For all practical purposes, the LTTE high
command had decided against publicizing Mahattaya's
investigation report, thus keeping many intriguing
issues in suspense. The LTTE categorically denied its
involvement in the murder of Rajiv Gandhi. One opinion
prevailing is that there was no need for the militants
to deny the murder if they genuinely plotted and killed
Rajiv Gandhi and in case they committed the murder, they
would have declared it publicly and provided reasons to
justify their killing, or else at least put up posters
within Jaffna for local consumption to hail their heroic
performance. Normally, the LTTE annually included in its
martyrs' list those heroes who had died in acts of
bravery and heroism while accomplishing their missions.
Those accused in Rajiv Gandhi's murder, but who
before being arrested committed suicide, including the
human bomb Dhanu, were not included in the martyrs'
list. Why? Furthermore, why have they not disclosed the
role Mahattaya played in the murder? Are they shielding
anyone, at the cost of their complacency by acquiescing
the blame? Are they trying to cover up anyone by keeping
the investigating report classified?
The above
details show the power struggle within the LTTE during
the pre-and post IPKF period. From 1988 to the end of
1991, Mahattaya operated independently in his capacity
as the deputy leader and he made use of the Tiger cadres
for his operations. Cadres followed the chain of command
and unwittingly carried out those orders. A way open to
the Indian government was to appoint an international
commission with wide terms of reference. Then there may
be opportunity for the commission to visit Sri Lanka,
meet the LTTE leaders in their own turf and record their
statements and thus convincingly probe into the
lingering allegations about the LTTE's connections in
the Rajiv Gandhi assassination conspiracy.
One
thing to be remembered clearly is that the assassination
issue, the Indo-Sri Lanka accord and the IPKF, these
three elements are interconnected, and if any one of
them is separated then it will be impossible to get to
the bottom of the tragic murder.
Chapter
47: Questions over Gandhi's killing
Next:
No confidence motion against the president.
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