NEW DELHI: The Special Investigation Team (SIT), which was set up to investigate whether there was a “conspiracy” to kill late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is getting ready to implicate the detained Unified Akali Dal President Simiranjit Singh Mann and Atinder Singh in what the SIT calls a larger ‘conspiracy’ to kill Indira Gandhi,

This ‘conspiracy’ is not related to the killing of the Prime Minister pm on October 31, 1984 but was a plan to kill her in’ Nagpur in September 1984, the SIT is said to have charged.

Charges against Simiranjit Singh and’ Atinder Pal Singh also include (i) waging war against the State, (ii), an alleged plan to breach the Bakhra Canal and (ii) an alleged plan to attack the residence of the prime minister and the parliament house with a plane. No pilot has been identified and it is not said whether the plan was an Indian Air Force jet or whatever.

Mann, Atinder Pal Singh, Prof Jagmohan Singh (a Bombay based lecturer who has been held under the draconian National Security Act for a number of months) and two businessmen are also to be implicated in the alleged “conspiracy.”

The Thakkar Commissioner had eluded to a “foreign hand,” the CLA. In Mrs. Gandhi’s murder. According to this “conspiracy” Mann, who resigned as a director general of police to protest the Indian army’s bloody assault on the Golden Temple in 1984, and others planned to kill Mrs. Indira Gandhi at Nagpur on September 8, 1984 while she was addressing a tally of National Students Union of India along with her son Rajiv.

The SIT said the “conspiracy” did not take place because Atinder Pal Singh could not procure a telescope for a rifle.

Balbir Singh a police official who was acquitted by the Supreme Court in the 1984 assassination is alleged to be the link between Mann and Atinderpal Singh, The SIT had not filed a charge sheet against Mann and others in the October assassination because Balbir Singh had been acquitted. They now discovered another “conspiracy” It has not been decided whether Delhi police or the CBI will file the case.

Article extracted from this publication >>  April 7, 1989