by Neena Gopal
No one was prosecuted; nobody was incarcerated except the seven accused.
Was there an attempt to ensure that the blame was laid only at the LTTE’s door; and that too, only at the door of these seven? Were the investigators, all of them crack policemen who went by the facts before them, unable to see the big picture, dismissing the dozens of conspiracy theories that were floated—admittedly, most of it conjecture—backed by little or no proof?
Kaarthikeyan, when asked about the differing conclusions he and Justice Jain had drawn, had this to say to his interviewer: ‘If you feel that the LTTE would have done this at the behest of anyone else, if you think that the LTTE would have done this for money, then you do not know or understand the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam . . .’
The trial itself had been rigorously conducted. In the mind-numbing three years that the sole surviving assassin, Nalini, and her co-conspirators faced judicial scrutiny, the court heard the testimony of 1044 witnesses, of whom 288 were examined. The court also went through 1477 documents presented by the prosecution that ran into 10,000 pages and examined some 1180 pieces of evidence. The defence presented seventy-four documents.
Held in camera, with only two reporters from the official government news agencies present to cover the proceedings, the final judgment held the accused guilty of the charges of conspiracy, as well as offences under the provisions of TADA, the Explosive Substances Act, the Arms Act, the Passport Act, the Foreigners Act and the Wireless and Telegraphy Act, and also under various other sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Kaarthikeyan said he felt vindicated, that he had been proved right. ‘Justice has been served, truth has triumphed,’ he told the press as he came out of court that day. ‘The nation’s and the SIT’s single-minded pursuit of truth stand[s] vindicated,’ Kaarthikeyan said. ‘The court has upheld the SIT’s findings and it has been proved that the Indian police are second to none.’
Kaarthikeyan’s satisfaction at a job well done came through when he told Frontline magazine in May 1992, soon after submitting the charge sheet: ‘In the first seven days after the assassination, the world media speculated whether the crime would remain a mystery forever. But, within 10 days we found some slender clues. Within 20 days we made the first arrests—of Bhagyanathan and Padma. We unearthed substantial evidence in 60 days, we made a number of arrests. Within 90 days, we tracked down the main conspirators in Bangalore. The charge-sheet was filed soon after.’
Judge Navaneetham’s verdict was in consonance with the findings of Kaarthikeyan’s SIT, which was evident from what he would say while delivering the final judgment.
‘In this case, Rajiv Gandhi, former Prime Minister, was assassinated in pursuance of a diabolical plot, carefully conceived and executed by a highly organized foreign terrorist organization, the LTTE. Sixteen innocent lives were lost and many sustained grievous/simple injuries . . .’ Judge Navaneetham said.
‘Considering the above circumstances, I hold this rarest of rare case and I award the death sentence for (sic) the accused,’ pronounced Judge Navaneetham, adding that ‘from the evidence, oral and documentary, it was established by the prosecution that the conspiracy was hatched by Prabakaran, the LTTE leader.’
The charge sheet filed by the SIT on 22 May 1992 detailed the events that led to the assassination from July 1987 when the IPKF landed in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. It listed forty-one accused.
Of the forty-one, twelve had died—ten of them were Sri Lankans, with three declared proclaimed absconders. None of the final twenty-six accused who were given the death sentence and were in custody, were given bail. All were lodged in the high-security Poonamallee jail.
The accused who were dead included Dhanu, the suicide bomber; ‘One-Eyed Jack’ alias Sivaresan alias Pakiachandran; Subha, the alternate bomber; the photographer Haribabu; Nehru, the radio operator; and the smuggler Shanmugham. Also dead were the other accused, the LTTE operatives implicated in the plot, Gundu Santhan, Suresh Master, Dixon alias Kishore, Amman alias Gaigaikumar, Anna alias Kirthi and Kamuna alias Jamila.
The LTTE’s supremo Prabhakaran, intelligence chief Pottu Amman and the women’s wing deputy chief Akila were the sole surviving Sri Lankan accused. They were declared proclaimed absconders.
The judge announced that the charge of conspiracy had been proved against all the accused, including the thirteen Indians involved.
Reading out the judgment through the day, and that too only the parts that he deemed relevant, the judge stated that the charges against Nalini, Accused No. 1, and Perarivalan, Accused No. 18, under IPC Section 302, had also been proved.
The judge held that Nalini ‘shared the common intention to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi’ and convicted her under all sixteen counts. The list of charges was exhaustive:
Nalini, Accused No. 1, who married Accused No. 3, Murugan, while they were in custody, was charged guilty under Section 3(2) of the TADA as the assassination was a terrorist act committed on Indian soil, under Section 326 of the IPC for causing grievous injuries to thirteen people and under Section 324 for causing simple injuries to six people; she was also found guilty of harbouring, conspiring, abetment and being preparatory to the commissioning of a terrorist act and of indulging in a disruptive act under Section 4(3) of the TADA.
Santhan, Accused No. 2, was found guilty under Section 3(3) of the TADA and Section 14 of the Foreigners Act.
Murugan, Accused No. 3, was found guilty under Section 3(3) of the TADA, Section 14 of the Foreigners Act and Section 6(1) A of the Wireless and Telegraphy Act.
Sankar alias Koneswaran, Accused No. 4; T. Vijayanandan, Accused No. 5; Ruban alias Sureshkumar, Accused No. 6 were found guilty under Section 3(3) of the TADA and Section 14 of the Foreigners Act.
Kanakasabapathy, Accused No. 7, was found guilty under Section 3(3) and 3(4) of the TADA, IPC Section 212 and Section 14 of the Foreigners Act.
Athirai alias Chandralekha, Accused No. 8, was found guilty under Section 3(4) of the TADA, IPC Section 212 and Section 14 of the Foreigners Act.
Perarivalan, Accused No. 18, alleged to have prepared the belt-bomb, was found guilty under Section 3(3) of TADA, Section 302 of the IPC read with Section 109 of the IPC (abetment), Sections 326 and 324 of the IPC. Sections 6(1)A of the Wireless and Telegraphy Act, Section 12 of the Passport Act and Section 4(3) read with Section 4(1) of the TADA. The charge against Perarivalan was that he purchased two 9-volt battery cells to detonate the bomb.
The others convicted were Robert Payas, Accused No. 9; Jayakumar, Accused No. 10; J. Shanthi, Accused No. 11; P. Vijayan, Accused No. 12; Selvalakshmi, Accused No. 13; Bhaskaran, Accused No. 14; Shanmugavadivelu alias Thambi Anna, Accused No. 15; Ravichandran alias Ravi alias Prakasam, Accused No. 16; Mahesh alias Surendran, Accused No. 17; Irumborai, Accused No. 19; S. Bhagyanathan, Accused No. 20; S. Padma, Accused No. 21; Sundaram alias Subha Sundaram, Accused No. 22; K. Dhanasekaran, Rangan, Accused No. 23; Rangan, Accused No. 24; Vickey alias Vigneswaran, Accused No. 25; and J. Ranganath, Accused No. 26.
Judge Navaneetham’s statement in court drew on the evidence that showed ‘how the hatred that had been sown in the mind of the LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabakaran, developed into a motive to kill Rajiv Gandhi’.
The judge said Prabhakaran had been ‘disappointed’ during his visit to Delhi, before the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka peace accord, when he found that leaders of the other Tamil groups EPRLF, ENDLF, TELO, PLOTE, EROS and TULF had also taken part in the meeting with Rajiv Gandhi in the Indian capital, and that not only was the LTTE not recognized as the sole representative of the Lankan Tamils, it was also not a signatory to the accord.
The judge did bring up the role of Tamil politician Vaiko, a former Rajya Sabha MP and, at the time, a member of the DMK, who would go on to head the breakaway Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), as it reinforced the judge’s conclusions about Prabhakaran’s disappointment.
A video that was submitted as an exhibit shows that on 6 February 1989, Vaiko ma
de a clandestine trip to Jaffna, where he met with the LTTE chief in the jungles of Vavuniya. The prosecution had submitted that in 1988 Vaiko had told the International Tamil Conference in London that Prabhakaran had spoken to him from Delhi on 29 July 1987, where he was kept isolated, with no access to visitors. Prabhakaran would say to him that he had been ‘betrayed’ by the Government of India and that he had been ‘stabbed in the back by Rajiv Gandhi’.
When Vaiko was cross-examined in court, he denied having said any of those things, but the judge concluded that the politician’s denial was false, adding that even though the witness had turned hostile, ‘his evidence . . . had to be accepted.’
‘It was at that point that the seed of hatred against Rajiv Gandhi was sown in the mind of Prabakaran,’ said the judge, noting that, ‘this hatred gradually developed into animosity against Rajiv Gandhi, in view of the events that took place after the IPKF was inducted in Sri Lanka.’
The judge also pointed to the Congress party manifesto—which spelt out Rajiv Gandhi’s commitment to the July 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka accord and his desire to protect the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka, which ran contrary to Prabhakaran’s goal of vivisecting the island nation and carving out a homeland for the Tamils—as having contributed to the motive behind the conspiracy. The only way to prevent the Indian leader’s return to power was to eliminate him.
Interestingly, referring to the arguments of the defence that many other militant groups such as the ULFA, Jammu and Kashmir militants and Punjab militants were against Rajiv Gandhi, Judge Navaneetham said that ‘while it was true that the Indian leader had been at the receiving end of threats from several militant groups in India, there was not an iota of evidence available to support the contention that any other foreign elements were involved’.
‘On the other hand, the facts and circumstances have proved, through witnesses and documents, and clearly established beyond any doubt that, Prabakaran and the LTTE alone had a very strong motive to kill Rajiv Gandhi,’ the judge said, running contrary to the Jain Commission findings which centred on the involvement of ‘foreign elements’.
Death, Life, Freedom
In February 1998, the defence went in appeal to the Supreme Court against the convictions and the sentences.
But on 11 May 1999, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence against four of the twenty-six accused, in a 2-1 majority verdict—Nalini; her husband, Murugan; Santhan; and Perarivalan—while commuting the death sentence against three of the accused, Robert Payas, Jayakumar and Ravichandran, to life imprisonment, and acquitting the nineteen others, all of whom walked free.
The bench comprised Justices K.T. Thomas, D.P. Wadhwa and S.S.M. Quadri, and each pronounced a separate verdict, with the last two constituting the majority view. While Justice Thomas and Justice Quadri agreed on awarding the death sentence to three of the accused, there was no agreement on the sentence to Nalini.
Justice Thomas said, ‘Nalini was an educated woman’ and ‘was an obedient participant in the conspiracy, but played no dominant role’. The judge said, ‘She was brainwashed by Murugan and others to believe the horrific stories about IPKF excesses in Sri Lanka,’ and had told her brother, Bhagyanathan, that she never realized how serious the conspiracy was until it was too late for her to withdraw.
Justice Quadri, however, differed. ‘If the death sentence is not awarded to Nalini, who was a willing participant in the conspiracy to kill, then justice would be stunted,’ he said.
Justice Wadhwa agreed, saying, ‘She was mentally prepared by Dhanu, Sivaresan, Murugan and Subha and she voluntarily participated in the dry run at V.P. Singh’s function, held a few days earlier.’
Both Justice Wadhwa and Justice Quadri were in agreement on awarding the death sentence to Nalini.
Justice Thomas observed, however, that, ‘As Murugan, the father of their child, was awarded the death sentence, the mother [Nalini] should be saved not to make the child an orphan.’ Nalini had married Murugan while in prison, and given birth to a girl child in 1992.
Justice Thomas divided the accused into four categories: the hardcore, those who induced others into the conspiracy and played an active role, those who joined the conspiracy, and those who played a passive role. The judge said all the accused belonging to the first category, including Prabhakaran, were never brought to trial, because they were either dead or absconding.
‘The seven accused whose conviction is upheld belong to the second category,’ the judge ruled.
While upholding the conviction of these seven accused on the charge of conspiracy to murder Rajiv Gandhi under Sections 302 and 120 (B) of the IPC, the judges set aside their conviction under various provisions of the TADA.
The judges acquitted eighteen of the remaining nineteen accused on the charge of conspiracy to murder Rajiv Gandhi. Their conviction for minor offences was upheld, but they were ordered to be released forthwith, as they had already served the necessary period of imprisonment. One of the accused, S. Shanmugavadivelu, was acquitted of all charges.
Senior advocate N. Natarajan, who appeared for Nalini, Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan, said the four accused would seek presidential mercy. They would also move the Supreme Court to stay the death sentence until the President acted on their mercy petitions, he added.
The four prisoners were lodged in Central Prison, Vellore. Nalini was shut away in the women’s wing.
The Seven Lifers
In April 2000, barely two years later, Nalini’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party chairperson and Rajiv Gandhi’s widow, intervened, as did the Tamil Nadu state cabinet, to make a recommendation to the Tamil Nadu governor and publicly plead for clemency.
The public appeal by Sonia was made on the premise that Nalini was now a mother, and both parents could not be sentenced to death as it would leave the child an orphan.
On 19 March 2008, seventeen years after her father was slain by a human bomb, Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi’s daughter, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, arrived at Vellore Jail to lay her own personal ghosts to rest. She was set to meet face-to-face with the woman who was the sole surviving member of the team of LTTE assassins who did away with her father on the night of 21 May 1991 on a blood-soaked field, some 25 kilometres from Chennai.
‘I don’t believe in anger, hatred and violence,’ Priyanka said in her statement. ‘And I refuse to allow it to overpower my life.’
It was a private affair, ‘a purely personal visit that I undertook completely on my own initiative’, Priyanka said in the statement that was released after news of the meeting with Nalini leaked to the Indian press. ‘I would be deeply grateful if this could be respected. . . . It was my way of coming to peace with the violence and loss that I have experienced,’ she said.
In February 2014, the Supreme Court commuted the death sentence of the three men convicted of assassinating Rajiv Gandhi to life in prison, dismissing the government’s appeal that the eleven-year delay in deciding their mercy petitions did not entitle them to a pardon.
The mercy petitions of Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan had been sent to the President, the last stage in the process of appeals, in 2000. While their mercy petitions were rejected eleven years later, their hanging was stayed in 2011 on the orders of Madras High Court. Three years later, they were no longer on death row.
Freedom for these three and the fourth killer, Nalini, and three others has been taken up by the Jayalalitha government in Tamil Nadu and, at every turn, its efforts to free Rajiv Gandhi’s killers has been blocked by the apex court.
Indeed, a day after the Supreme Court order, on 19 February 2014, when the state had suo motu ordered the release of all seven life convicts, the Centre rushed to the Supreme Court and stayed their release.
In March 2016, the Tamil Nadu government once again wrote a similar letter to the ministry of home affairs, seeking its opinion on releasing the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The letter said that while the state
had already decided to release them, it was necessary to seek the Centre’s opinion under Section 435 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. It said that the Tamil Nadu government had received petitions from all seven convicts—Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan, Jayakumar, Robert Payas, Ravichandran and Nalini—requesting that they be released as they had spent twenty-four years in prison.
The letter also referred to a writ petition filed by Nalini in Madras High Court seeking her release, noting that four of the seven convicts are Sri Lankan nationals.
In April 2016, the Supreme Court once again rejected the proposal of the Tamil Nadu government—with one eye on the upcoming polls in May 2016—to release the seven lifers. The ministry of home affairs told the state that ‘since the matter is sub-judice in the Supreme Court, it has no authority to release the prisoners’.
It was in the run-up to the court’s verdict in 1998, however, that for reasons that remain unclear, the Congress party and the Gandhi family, acting either on bad advice or bad judgement, believed that the SIT and the specially designated court were not moving fast enough, or in the right direction, and supported the Jain Commission’s criticism of the SIT’s findings. The SIT was hunting down Rajiv Gandhi’s killers, bringing them to justice and preparing the case against them that would be tried in the specially Designated Trial Court. To them, the Jain Commission, set up to probe the conspiracies behind the assassination, was seen to be, as the eminent lawyer A.G. Noorani put it, ‘obstructive’.
‘The Jain Commission came perilously close to wrecking the trial,’ Noorani states. ‘Sadly, neither the Supreme Court nor the Delhi High Court cared to intervene. The triumph of justice was due entirely to the integrity and independent spirit of Judges S.M. Sidickk and V. Navaneetham and to the devoted labours of the Special Investigation Team of the Central Bureau of Investigation headed by its Joint Director D.R. Kaarthikeyan, who showed courage and honesty,’ says Noorani. High praise indeed.
