The Nation: Rajiv Gandhi Killings; The Buts Remain

The Supreme Court verdict may not be the last word on the case as fresh conspiracy theories are spawned.

The acquitted emerging from death row after eight years.

A few hours before the Supreme Court delivered its judgement, some of the accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case sat around in their cells in Chennai's central prison hedging bets on what would emerge from the portals of the apex court. They had drawn up an order of their own, most of them confident that they would soon be walking free. They were not quite off the mark. Their predictions by and large matched the verdict of the three-judge bench: four sentenced to death, three to life imprisonment and 19 acquitted.

It was a big relief for them. From the special court's order in January last year when judge V. Navaneethan had decreed death for all. "Rajiv Gandhi ... was assassinated in pursuance of a diabolic plot, carefully conceived by a foreign terrorist organisation, the LTTE ...,'' he had said, adding that death warrants were merited for all the accused for an assassination that was among the "rarest of rare". The Supreme Court shared Navaneethan's views on the killing, describing it as "an unparalleled act in the annals of crime committed in the country". While delivering the judgement on May 11, it observed, "Cruelty of the crime has known no bounds. The crime sent shock waves in the country." But it made a distinction.

Rajiv Gandhi

Rajiv Gandhi: Killed by a human bomb on May 21, 1991at Sriperumbudur. SIT filed a charge-sheet a year later against 41 of whom only 26 were arrested. On January 28, 1998, the special court sentenced all to death. The Supreme Court confirmed death penalty on four, awarded life term to three and acquitted 19.

It differentiated between murderers, conspirators and harbourers. In short, the active and the passive. As lawyer Ram Jethmalani had said after the special court's verdict, they could not all have been equally sinful. Taking note of this, the apex court threw out charges slapped under the draconian Terrorist's and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) and ruled that none of the accused wanted to strike fear in the governments either at the Centre or the state, nor overawe them and strike terror in the minds of the people. The four who have been singled out for the death penalty were those who had participated in a dry-run for the assassination, actually purchased material to assemble the belt-bomb and arranged accommodation and transport for the LTTE hit-squad.

Eight summers ago, the country had listened in shock to the news of Rajiv's killing at an election meeting at Sriperumbudur on May 21. Soon after, the CBI constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) which set about a task that was far from easy. Over 200 of the country's best forensic and explosive experts got into action to unravel whatever they could from the small ground where the assassin had, with the press of a button, killed herself and the former prime minister. That was the first lead, though dead, that took the conspiracy beyond Indian waters into Sri Lanka.

Though the Supreme Court has delivered its judgement and zeroed in on four of the 26 arrested, the ifs and buts remain. LTTE chief V. Prabhakaran, who is the prime accused, still roams free and out of range. The four sentenced to death have a month's time to file a review petition in the apex court and then beg for the President's mercy.

Previous Murders

Mahatma Gandhi: Shot by Nathuram Godse on January 30, 1948. On February 10,1949, East Punjab High Court sentenced him and Narayan Apte to death. On October 12, Privy Council rejected their appeal. They were hanged on November 15.

Indira Gandhi: Shot by Beant and Satwant Singh on October 31, 1984. Beant killed. On January 22, 1986, the Supreme Court sentenced Satwant, Kehar and Balbir Singh to death. On August 3, 1988, court freed Balbir. The other two were hanged on January 6, 1989.

General Arun Vaidya: Shot dead in Pune on August 10, 1986. Six years later, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence on Harjinder Singh 'Jinda' and Sukhdev Singh 'Sukha'. The two were hanged on October 9, 1992.

Defence lawyer S. Doraiswamy, who camped in Delhi for five months with help from P. Nedumaran, the champion of Tamil causes spearheading the "Save 26 Tamil Lives'' campaign, is now preparing a revision petition. Right from the beginning, the case has been moving on parallel fronts. Apart from the sit, the P.V. Narasimha Rao regime also set up the M.C. Jain Commission to inquire into the conspiracy angle. While Jain's interim report brought down the I.K. Gujral government, the final report is still before the Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA). Thus there are many fronts on which the assassination probe will never die. Nor will the controversy. Not with elections due in a few months from now.
Already, within hours of the apex's courts acquittal, Ranganath, accused of harbouring Sivarasan, the mastermind behind the killing, has added a new twist. "Godman Chandraswami masterminded the assassination. I told D. Karthikeyan, the sit chief, this but was told not to mention it.'' Quick to catch on, BJP spokersperson and General Secretary M. Venkaiah Naidu has demanded a probe into the "startling revelation". Chandraswami, however, scoffs at the allegations. "The CBI is still investigating the St. Kitts case in which I was supposed to be a great friend of Rajiv's and now there is this charge. Only one of the two things can be true.''

On another front, the DMK which was damned in the Jain Commission interim report is seeking to extract mileage out of the Supreme Court verdict. Says a senior DMK minister: "Obviously the sit could not find anything suspicious in the role of Karunanidhi.'' There is also a feeling that the MDMA will go slow as the BJP-led government is now under no pressure to appease AIADMK chief J. Jayalalitha under whose insistence the agency was set up in the first place.

"All kinds of theories will be floated on political lines,'' says Kartikeyan. "More personalities, mostly political will be added to a list of suspects.'' That may well happen as long as the case continues to draw attention. But for the four who have been sentenced to death, only the next few months will matter. Between now and Nedumaran's review petitions and the President's decision on mercy pleas. A matter of life and death.