THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, 19 April 2008 — The commando who led the operation to capture conspirators behind former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s killing believes that many of Priyanka’s questions would have had answers if the commandos were “allowed to go in and catch the enemies alive.”
“We were kept waiting for 36 hours before we got the permission to storm Sivarasan’s den. After 16 years, I still believe it would have been a different story had the conspirators been caught alive,” Maj. Ravi, the commando-turned-filmmaker, told Arab News.
Sivarasan shot himself while five of his accomplices committed suicide by consuming cyanide at Konanakunte in suburban Bangalore on Aug. 18, 1991, three months after the former prime minister was killed in Tamil Nadu along with seventeen others by suicide bomber Dhanu.
The state police subsequently registered a case and recovered the camera that had filmed Rajiv’s assassination. D. R. Karthikeyan, the senior Central Bureau of Investigation officer, also visited the scene of the blast.
The trial court later declared LTTE chief Vellupillai Prabhakaran, intelligence chief Pottu Amman and women wing leader Akhila as proclaimed offenders and found all 26 accused guilty.
Last week, Rajiv Gandhi’s daughter Priyanka admitted visiting Nalini Sriharan, the only living member of the suicide bomb squad who was at the site of the assassination, in jail in March and said she wanted to make peace with violence. Priyanka’s mother Sonia Gandhi had earlier saved the convict from the gallows granting clemency to her husband’s killer.
“Senior CBI officers were present outside Sivarasan’s hide-out and they said the operation would only go ahead when Special Investigation Team (SIT)chief Karthikeyan would be back from Hyderabad the next morning. When the crowd began to swell and police started shouting on the megaphone, Sivarasan smelled the danger,” Ravi said.
He said the commandos were called in only after the SIT identified the hide-out and made a detailed plan. Ravi said Karthikeyan wanted to be present at the time of the operation and this delay gave enough time to Sivarasan and his men to carry out their scheme.
“In certain circumstances, when you are supposed to carry out an operation, the man on the spot is given permission to operate according to his plan. But Karthikeyan wanted to plan it and do it himself,” Ravi said, adding, however, he did not believe it was deliberate.
According to Ravi, the SIT chief asked for more commandos and kept his team waiting for at least 36 hours. “More commandos hardly make any difference. A couple of our men or ten of us may have got killed in the operation but we could have caught them alive,” Ravi, who is now busy with his latest film Kargil, said.
“Sivarasan had an AK-47, a pistol and a cyanide vial in his mouth but we had more weapons and antidote for the cyanide and the order to wait did not make any sense to us. The enemy should not know you are there and there should be a surprise element in such operations,” he said.
“They started firing at us and one of us got injured. Still the permission was not given to launch the operation,” Ravi said.
The Kerala-based filmmaker has packed all this drama into his Malayalam-Tamil film Mission 90 Days. Mammootty plays the role of a brave commando whose hands are tied at the crucial moment. After Kargil starring Mohanlal, Sunil Shetty and Atul Kulkarni, he plans a film on Kandahar hijack drama in which Kamal Hasaan and Mohanlal are expected to play key roles.
“I know it’s not fair to speak about such things in the context of the inquisitive daughter from the most powerful family visiting a conspirator behind her father’s assassins and seeking truth. But I think the record should be set straight,” the former commando said.
“So many books and reports have already come out on the issue and I am not the first person who is talking about this delay. It was an insult to us. For professional commandos, it was frustrating,” he added.
Kerala Pledges Support to Beijing Olympics
Kerala’s Left Democratic Front government has slammed anti-Chinese protests by exiled Tibetans and pledged support to Olympic Games to be held in Beijing later this year.
Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan, the octogenarian communist leader who read out the “oath of solidarity” at a government-sponsored function at the Martyr’s Column here, launched a scathing attack on the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader who lives in India.
He even called the Nobel Peace Prize laureate an agent of US President George W. Bush and other “imperial forces who are out to destroy the People’s Republic and people’s movements all over the world.”
“He is exiled because he tried to destabilize a democratic government in Tibet. He has become an agent of Bush and that’s why he’s creating problems for Olympics in Beijing,” the chief minister alleged.
Echoing the Chinese allegations that the exiled leader was behind the protests against the Olympic flame throughout the world, he alleged that the Dalai Lama was creating problems against smooth conduct of the Olympics. “The torch rally would go on well overcoming all the problems he and his likes are creating,” he said.
Many of his ministers, legislators, mayor of the city, party leaders and a few athletes also took the ‘oath’ at the function organized by the official Sports Council. However, people’s participation was poor despite a public appeal by the authorities.
