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THe ASSASSINATION 
OF RAJIV GANDHI
SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY
KONARK
PRICE: Rs 350

Early in his book Subramanian Swamy recounts how he was once "watching TV news on Sri Lanka developments with Laloo Yadav". The Bihari leader, in what must rank as the most original take on the Tamil-Sinhalese ethnic conflict, remarked, "Kya jhagda hai? Sub Madrasi lagtey hain (What are they fighting for? All look like Tamils)." The anecdote sets the tone for a volume that derives itself from Swamy's trademark mix of wicked humour, delicious stories and undying quest for vengeance. The central thesis of The Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi is that the killing of the former prime minister was followed by a disinformation campaign that sought to exonerate the ltte. For this Swamy, the Harvard-trained economist who is now president of the Janata Party, blames the Tamil Tigers' "people in high places" -- a phrase borrowed from an LTTE leader. The strategy, Swamy argues, proved successful in keeping alive a contrived mystery even after the cbi and courts had done their work. It managed to "manipulate the Jain Commission" inquiring into the larger conspiracy behind the murder to the extent that it "declared open season on assassination 'theories'".

In between identifying the "hidden" friends of the ltte, Swamy takes a swipe, in typically Swamy style, at all and sundry. So R. Venkataraman's presidency is compared to that of "von Hindenburg" in pre-Nazi Germany, the RSS is the "mother spider of all black widow spiders", Dhirubhai Ambani is "one of those Papa Docs of banana republics". Sometimes sublime, more often ridiculous, instinctively over the top but never banal. That's Swamy -- and this extract.

First Among the Red Herrings
No sooner Rajiv Gandhi's body had arrived in Delhi by special plane than rumours were set afloat as to who was behind the assassination. I am convinced today, with a review of events and the disinformation campaign unleashed, that in retrospect had I not been in office for a month after the assassination, and as colleague of a prime minister who had a mind of his own, the LTTE disinformation network in India would have thoroughly confounded the picture after the assassination and could have escaped the responsibility for the assassination.

Much of the principle breakthroughs in unravelling the horrid crime were made during that one month (May 21-June 21,1991), which made it impossible for what (LTTE leader) Pottu Amman had hoped: that their "people in high places" in Delhi would successfully spread the word that the LTTE had nothing to do with the assassination.

From the first day, the attempt was to deny that it was the LTTE. Over the months as it became clear that the LTTE was indeed the prime suspect the attempt was to trivialise the assassination by floating all kinds of wild theories implicating practically everybody so that people would not know what to believe.

The first person to raise doubts about the LTTE being the assassins was the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), T.N. Seshan. He came to see me after the assassination to tell me that Mossad of Israel had assassinated Rajiv Gandhi, and that if we made him the home minister he would unravel it. At that stage the only other person insistent that he be taken into confidence was President Ranasinghe Premadasa of Sri Lanka. I never understood why.

I thought in the case of Seshan that he was in emotional shock, and had taken leave of his senses. But I told him to talk to Chandra Shekhar about it, and added that since we were a caretaker government I doubted if he could be made home minister in the middle of a general election. After all, he was the CEC.

Seshan did go and talk to the prime minister, and later when I met the prime minister he said he was thoroughly taken aback by Seshan and a bit amused. But we forgot all about it soon enough since we had serious business at hand.

Journalist in a Honey Trap
Seshan soon appeared in Sunday under editor Vir Sanghvi's signature, as the unnamed source to raise the same doubt, but Sanghvi made an addition: that a minister in Chandra Shekhar's government had masterminded the assassination. Knowing Sanghvi as a flippant and supercilious journalist, I would have normally disregarded what he wrote. But there were reports that he had once gone to London on an LTTE sponsored trip, and was a victim of a honey trap. That was the LTTE hold on him. What is curious is that Sanghvi was the first journalist to raise a doubt in a signed article about whether the LTTE was at all a culprit in the assassination. This doubt was raised after the CBI/SIT had already filed the charge sheet in the Trial Court naming Prabhakaran and 25 others of the LTTE as the accused.

It is interesting that the Supreme Court has held that the assassination decision was made by Prabhakaran after being provoked by two interviews of Rajiv Gandhi (RG) taken by Vir Sanghvi, and published in the same Sunday (para 379, page 385). The nation needs to know what is so authentic to Prabhakaran about Sanghvi that he should have been so provoked by his recounting that RG would despatch the IPKF again, and that RG thought that it was justified in the first place. A perusal of the various issues of Sunday, and the columns of some of its leading editorial lights, however clearly shows that the magazine had been for quite some time, since 1991, espousing the LTTE line in India.

Sanghvi was summoned before the Jain Commission on my affidavit, and cross-examined on his attempts to exonerate the LTTE, and on the sources of his pro-LTTE stories, but he cut a sorry figure because the only source of his wild allegations was a dead politician! Now who can verify that? How could any independent journalist declare the LTTE as innocent when a trial was well under way, unless it was to help the LTTE by disinformation?

Hidden Friends of the RSS
The stage set into motion by Pottu Amman, and taken judicial notice of by the Supreme Court, is the LTTE's attempt to deny their involvement in the assassination and blame the CIA/Mossad for it. For this purpose, the LTTE had mobilised (according to the decoded wireless intercepts of Pottu Amman's conversation with Sivarasan, after the assassination) their friends in "high places" in India. Thereafter, the nation did witness a chorus, as if orchestrated, giving credence to the same story ...

But it is sufficiently clear to me that this chorus of the assortment of worthies, perhaps the people in high places in Pottu Amman's reckoning, was principally orchestrated by Arjun Singh by manipulating the proceedings of the Jain Commission. Arjun Singh had possibly several motives, but his palpable hatred of the Nehru family is no secret to anybody except obviously to Sonia Gandhi. The way Arjun Singh tried to divert the government-communicated LTTE threat to her life to Mahatma Gandhi's murderers should have made her wonder. Rajiv disliked Arjun Singh and was planning to dump him after the 1991 elections. Rajiv told me so. He as prime minister already had him (Arjun Singh) investigated by home minister Buta Singh on reports of despicable corruption, even as he had learnt from Giani Zail Singh that it was Arjun Singh who first had wanted the President of India to take the unprecedented step of sacking the prime minister, and anointing him in his place, in return for a second term for the Giani as president!

Then there are reports of Arjun Singh's confidant, a businessman from Indore, who maintains a close liaison with Libya, and recipient of deposits made into an account in Cyprus. No doubt too that Libya must be thrilled with the Mossad theory peddled by Arjun Singh. But he has nothing to fear as long as the BJP is in power. He is their "asset" because some of the people he has been plotting against are by a coincidence (or is it?) staunch opponents of the RSS ...

Few know that Arjun Singh's first election campaign in 1957 was as Lohiaite Socialist Party candidate. There are those who claim to have seen RSS chief M.S. Golwalkar, who had stayed at his father's residence in the early 1950s, along with a young Arjun Singh in khaki shorts and black cap (RSS uniform)! I believe them, but cannot yet vouch for it.

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