WSN Service MADRAS: The government of India team investigating the Rajiv murder case appears to have run into a dead end It has so far identified the explosive used in the killing and nothing more. A few pictures of the alleged killer a woman have been recovered but neither her identity nor those of the accomplices has been established.

The C.B.I. is working on the promise that the killer or killers were Lankan Tamils but nothing worthwhile has so far been achieved to link the murder to the Tamil militant group. LTTE according to intelligence sources.

Having drawn a blank at Madras the C.B.I. team went to Sri Lanka to seek that country’s intelligence network’s help. Meanwhile agencies quoted Tamil sources as claiming that the woman suicide bomber halted from Sri Lanka’s northern Vavuniya district and had a brother in the LTTE. The sources identified the woman as Sundri from pictures published of her. The said Sundri was a former student of Vavamiya Maha Vidyala where her father Mr Sunder lingam is still a teacher. Security officers here however said they had received no information about the identity of the alleged killer of Gandhi. Other Tamil sources disputed the identity of Sundri and said that the woman resembled another woman who had participated in the peace talks with Sri Lankan officers in last year.

According to a media report the Indian team is questioning a Tamil woman employee of the Indian High Commission in Colombo who allegedly telephoned someone a few hours before the Rajiv murder saying that the Indian Prime Minister was in danger of being killed. Her conversation was taped by High Commission authorities.

Indian government circles tend to link the assassination to the LTTE but what has muddled the pictures is a meeting the LTTE nominees had with Rajiv Gandhi on March 5 wherein it is said the former Indian Prime Minister held out a promise of support to the LTTE in the event of his returning to power.

Sumathi is alive

COLOBO: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) girl whose photograph was published in the militant organizations Magazine and who was suspected to be the possible assassin of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi has been identified as Sumathi and is alive official sources here said.

The LTTE magazine Viduthalai Puligal (Liberation Tigers) in its December 90 issue had published a photograph of their woman activist carrying a weapon who was said to have a striking resemblance to that of the photograph of the suspected assassin published in newspapers following the Sriperumbudur bomb blast that killed Gandhi.

Gandhi’s assassin is believed to have died instantly and investigators are trying to identify her.

India’s visiting high level central bureau of investigation (CBI) team and its Sri Lankan counterparts have been able to establish the identity of the girl in the Viduthalai Puligal magazine as Sumathi and have also discovered that she is alive informed political sources here said.

Article extracted from this publication >> June 7, 1991