When I
heard LTTE forces order Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination
I checked with my Sri Lankan sources
who said the then PM would be killed in keeping with Prabhakaran’s style.
POLITICS | Long form | 23-8-2016
COLONEL
R HARIHARAN @colhari2
Saturday,
August 20th was the late Rajiv Gandhi's birthday. Rajiv Gandhi’s political
career was barely seven years; it started with the assassination of his mother
Ms Indira Gandhi in 1984 and ended with his own assassination. But within those
years, he made a mark by doing things differently from the traditional political
class. Had the charismatic leader not become the victim of a LTTE suicide
bomber on 21 May 1991, the Congress party's fortunes might have been scripted
differently.
Neena
Gopal's latest book “The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi” has once
again brought the focus on the sordid episode of the nation's failure to
protect its former prime minister. I have always found Sri Lanka fascinating
particularly after serving as the head of intelligence of the Indian Peace
Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1990.
The author,
during the course of writing the book, had long conversations with me on the
situation leading up to Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. I have not read the book
yet; but I find from the published extracts the book contains some of my recollections.
Rajiv
Gandhi served as prime minister from 1984 to 1989; he had no political
experience but his exuberance to get things done and impulsiveness and
impatience to get results endeared him to the masses. He attempted to end
longstanding conflicts facing the country during his term. While some of them
like river water sharing in Punjab and ending Bodo insurgency in Assam were
partly successful, many other such attempts did not live up to the
expectations.
When Rajiv
came to power India- Sri Lanka relations were in a mess. Mrs Gandhi had given
sanctuary to a motley collection of Tamil separatist insurgent groups who had
fled the island nation along with thousands of Tamils in the wake of Sri
Lanka's infamous July 1983 pogrom against Tamils. The Tamil insurgent groups became
a potential threat to Sri Lanka’s sovereignty. So Sri Lanka had little option
but to accept Indian counsel, particularly after talks with Tamil groups failed
to yield results.
Rajiv
Gandhi signed the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord 1987 with President JR Jayawardane to ensure
Sri Lankan Tamils got a degree of autonomy within a united Sri Lanka, while
India underwrote the disarming of Tamil militants. The Accord was hastily
conceived and hurriedly executed in typical Rajiv Gandhi style of trying to
resolve problems in double time, often defying political wisdom. Though the
implementation of the Accord cost Rajiv Gandhi his life, it is an anachronism
that both the countries never allowed it to reach its logical conclusion.
Rajiv
Gandhi's leadership had done quite well till opposition parties managed to
rally together and focus on his alleged involvement in the Bofors gun purchase scandal; the misconceived
Indian army intervention in Sri Lanka only added masala to the allegations of
Rajiv's ineptness. Young Gandhi scion's popularity drastically came down, resulting
in the Congress party’s defeat in the national elections held in 1989.
It was
a depressing time for men in uniform like me in Sri Lanka from 1988 onwards
when opposition parties at home ridiculed the Indian forces while the Congress
was put on the defensive. The DMK government had come to power in Tamil Nadu was
openly hostile to the IPKF.
It
extended hospitality to wounded LTTE cadres in the state, while our soldiers
fighting them died un-mourned in foreign soil.
The VP
Singh government in New Delhi and President Premadasa were on the same page on
the recall of IPKF. It was on 24 March 1990 the last landing craft carrying Indian
Peace Keeping Force commander and his operations group left Trincomalee harbour
to Chennai.
Thus both
the governments saved the LTTE from annihilation as IPKF had already cut it
down to size, reducing the overblown self image of Prabhakaran to the realistic
proportion of an insurgent leader in hiding in the jungle. He knew he was
fighting with his back to the wall; eight batches of LTTE leadership were dead.
Even as
IPKF observed a ceasefire, Prabhakaran had secretly made common cause with his
sworn enemy Sri Lanka President Ranasinghe Premadasa to do what he couldn't -
to evict the IPKF from Sri Lanka. It must have been a humiliating experience
for Prabhakaran to break bread with Premadasa. Prabhakaran’s plot to
assassinate Rajv Gandhi was probably conceived at that time. Premadasa readily
obliged the LTTE leader; he not only issued an ultimatum to India to withdraw
the forces from the island but also supplied arms to the LTTE.
During
the next couple of months, the IPKF was being disbanded in Chennai and our
headquarters was being wound up. The component units and formations moved out. Last
of our radio interception units that had regularly shared its output of LTTE transmissions
brought me one such intercept.
It was a
recording of one of the LTTE networks operating from somewhere in Nilgiris in
Tamil Nadu. The contents of the conversation in the peculiar Jaffna Tamil
dialect were startling. It ordered the “dumping” of Rajiv Gandhi. While I don’t
remember the exact wording, the scene is still embedded in my mind.
Dumping
is the term LTTE used for killing. I was familiar with the LTTE dialect used in
their communication. In 1987, I had collected the documentation of LTTE
kangaroo courts done with Nazi precision ordering “dumping” of 102 people who
were shot and dumped in garbage pit for committing crimes like selling drugs,
soliciting etc. I called the radio operator who knew Jaffna Tamil very well to
confirm the content of the intercept; he was emphatic it was an order to kill
Rajiv Gandhi. I was shocked and immediately
informed the IPKF force commander.
He
asked me not to “touch it.” He had good reasons because we have no functional
headquarters for follow up action. He asked me to hand over the audio cassette
to the Intelligence Bureau in Chennai for taking further action. Immediately, I
went over to the IB headquarters and met the joint director.
He was
a good friend known to me for over a decade. He listened to the audio and
laughed at me. “Colonel, it is all bravado. They are not specifically saying
when and where Rajiv should be killed. In any case, I don’t believe they would
kill Rajiv. Why would they?” I still remember the conversation because it left
me uneasy though I had no answer to his logical reasoning. With a troubled
mind, I returned to my office.
I
checked with my Sri Lankan Tamil sources who said Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination
would be in keeping with Prabhakaran’s style.
Later,
when I was in New Delhi in early 1991, I dropped into the North Block office of
the same IB officer I had met in Chennai. He was holding a top security
appointment. He asked me about my future plans after retirement in March 1991 and
offered to assist me in case I needed any help. I again asked him about the
Rajiv Gandhi assassination cassette; he simply laughed it off.
The
rest is history; Rajiv Gandhi’s killing came as a shock to me. I was left with
a lingering feeling of guilt for not vigorously pursuing the information I had
in hand which could have prevented the assassination. When the Special
Investigation Team was formed to investigate Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, its
chief DR Karthikeyan called me to help out in the investigations. As I had
retired, I suggested the names of officers and NCOs who could help him to progress
the investigation.
I also informed
him about the audio cassette containing assassination threat to Rajiv Gandhi I
had handed over to the IB. He told me the Navy also had a similar intercept.
This is
one instance where Indian intelligence community as a whole had failed. Now I
understand why Americans had failed to read the 9/11 attack although they had
bits and pieces of information about it well in advance. Collecting information
is one thing; but assessing what it implied is a different ball game.
Napoleon
said if you expect the enemy to attack from four directions, he may well do it
from the fifth one!
So
true!
Courtesy: India Today opinion portal
DailyO.in
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