MADRAS, PTI: The chief of Sri Lanka’s rebel group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Velupilai Prabhakaran masterminded the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, according to the charge sheet in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case filed here on May 20.
It said the LTTE chief wanted to wreak vengeance on the late prime minister for his Sri Lankan policy since July 1987, when the Indo Sri Lankan agreement was signed leading to the peace keeping operations by Indian troops.
The peace keeping operations later went haywire as Indian troops found themselves in a bitter battle with the LTTE.
Prabhakaran never forgave Rajiv Gandhi for his total commitment to the unity and integrity of Sri Lanka and for equating LTTE with other Sri Lankan Tamil groups, it said,
The charge sheet, filed by the special investigating team (SIT), probing the assassination case, indicts 41 people including Prabhakaran, his intelligence wing chief, Pottu Amman and the LTTE women’s deputy chief Akhil, Of these 12 are dead.
It charges the LTTE with an “organizational motive,” to kill Rajiv as it feared his return to power. lt however, mentions no personal motive for any of the accused including Dhanu, the assassin. No other organization has been cited in connection with the charges.
The charge sheet, submitted a day before the first death anniversary of Rajiv Gandhi, quoted Prabhakaran telling the press just before the agreement was signed that he was “stabbed in the back” by Rajiv Gandhi who made him feel “humiliated.”
The charge sheet was filed Wednesday before the designated court of S.M Siddickk by high level SIT officials and counsel, led by its chief D.R, Karthikeyan, It was filed in the judge’s chambers even as a battery of pressmen and photographers were waiting outside. It, named 26 Sri Lankan Tamil accused and 15 Indians. Narrating the sequence of the plot, the charge sheet said the assassination plan began in July 1987, but was actually hatched in Jaffna inmid-1990, During the V.P.Singh government in 1990, a statement by Rajiv Gandhi predicting elections in early 1991, spurred the LTTE into action as it feared that he would seek to implement the 1987 agreement again, if elected.
The first group of Robert Payas, Vijayan, his wife Selvalakshmi, Jayakumar and his wife Shanti came to Tamil Nadu in September 1990 to fix accommodation for the conspirators, They all came in the guise of refugees and settled down in Madras suburbs.
Later Murugan, the key LTTE militant, whose original name was Sriharan came to Madras in early 1991 under special instruction from Pottu Amman to cultivate an Indian family which could help them to execute the plot without any trace, Murugan cultivated Nalini and her brother Bhagynathan and Mother Padma. All three were arrested and listed as key conspirators. Murugan married Nalini after the assassination,
In the meantime, “Subha” Sundaram, an Indian freelance photographer, Perarivalan, a Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) activist, Ravichandran alias Ravi, head of the “Tami! National Retrieval Troops” (TNRT), an Indian extremist group trained by the LTTE, Mahesh, Ravi’s accomplice, and Irumborai, another DK Man, went to Jaffna to meet Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman to discuss logistics.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 29, 1992
