SRIPERUMBUDUR: Did former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi Survive an assassination attempt prior to being killed in the bomb blast here in the southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu?
The Sriperumbudur town Congress (I) president Ranganathan the all Indian Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham (AIADMK) Sriperumbudur union secretary and the village self-governing body (Panchayat) union chairman Murthy believe that the one-woman suicide squad had made an attempt to kill Gandhi about ten minutes earlier near his mother Indira Gandhi’s statue at Sriperumbudur.
They told visiting PTI correspondents that when Gandhi made an unscheduled halt near the statue to garland it on the request of local Congress (I) and AIADMK functionaries the dark complexioned woman had tried to break through the police cordon to reach Gandhi.
The woman had tried to get close to Gandhi on the pretext that she wanted to garland him but was prevented from doing so by a local policeman who asked her to proceed to the nearby meeting venue and seek permission from officials there for the purpose the local leaders say.
Ranganathan said the woman might have tried to get at Gandhi at the statue spot as there was a power transformer of the state electricity board nearby and a blast at that spot could have caused greater casualties.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 31, 1991
