COLOMBO: The infamous rifle butt assault on Rajiv Gandhi as he inspected 3 guard of honor after signing the Indo-Sri Lanka agreement in July 1987 was not just a spur of the moment action by a lone naval man angry over the accord, implies a new book by a Lankan author.
Rohan Gunaratna’s recently published Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka the role of India’s intelligence agencies, says it was part of a plan hatched within the Sri Lankan navy, Two other members of the guard were supposed to strike Gandhi with their bayonets after he fell to ground from the first blow.
The assault took place as the then prime minister was leaving Colombo after signing the controversial accord with the Sri Lankan president, J.R.Jayewardene. As Gandhi inspected the guard of honor, a naval rating Vijithamuni Rohana De Silva stepped out, lifted his rifle and before the security men could react struck him, Gandhi ducked, avoiding a head injury. He did fall down, the blow caught him across the shoulders.
Vijithamuni was court marshalled but did not serve the full sentence, as the new president, Ranasinghe Premadasa, granted an amnesty. Vijnhamuni said at the trial he thought the accord would make the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) chief, Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the northeastand he would have to honor him the same way he had been ordered to honor the visiting Indian. This has been the generally available version of the event, but Rohan Gunaratna offers more. Gunaratna says there was “considerable unrest and bewilderment among the Sri Lankan security forces” about the proposed accord days before it was signed. Some members thought Gandhi’s visit marked the “beginning of a dark era for Sri Lanka,” and a few naval ratings “decided to do something about it.”
The plan within the navy cells was to kill Rajiv Gandhi, The 19yearold naval rating was to hit Gandhi on the head and make him fall and then the two men on either side of the first auacker were to strike him with their ceremonial bayonets. But for some unknown reason, the other two men refrained from going into action during the assault “if they did, Gandhi could have suffered serious injuries, and could have died.”
The sinister plan has hitherto been kept a secret,” Gunaraina says. Ina footnote he attributes the details of the plot to “a confession the naval rating made at the CID headquarters to another detainee.”
According to Jayewardene the military was “dissatisfied” after the aborted Vadamarachchi campaign and before the signing of the accord. “Four years of fighting and men dying daily was frustrating. A very pro Sinhala group which had the backing of a section of the armed forces went to Dixit (Indian high commissioner to Sri Lanka) and asked him whether India will support LR. if there is a coup,” the former president told the author.
According to estimates by the Sri Lankan intelligence, by early 1987 nearly 15,000 militants had been trained in camps in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere in India. About 8000 of them were from the People Liberation Organization of Tamil Eclam (PLOTE). The LTTE sent about 2000.
According to a figure the author claims to have received from LTTE sources, RAW instructors and retired military personnel trained 1,351 LTTE cadres in eight batches between late 1983 and mid1985. Later LTTE’s own instructors took over the training in India, and Gunaratna suggests that about 650 cadres benefited during the next two years.
The LTTE instructors included Velupillai Prabhakaran, regional commanders, Kumarappa and Pulendran, and Sathasivam Krishnakumar “KITTU,” Prabhakaran is the only alive on this list. Sivarasan, the man said [0 have. masterminded the Rajiy Gandhi assassination, is among those who were trained in these camps.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 5, 1993
