Rajiv Gandhi orders Prabakaran’s Assassination but Prabakaran Assassinated Rajiv first!
Maj Gen Harkirat Singh, commander of the IPKF claims that he was ordered not once but twice to eliminate Prabakaran when he arrived to meet the Indian Generals in Palaly in September 1987. What is poignant about this revelation is that it was only on 3 June 1987 that India violated Sri Lanka’s territory by dropping parippu threatening Sri Lanka not to retaliate, thereafter on 29thJuly 1987 Sri Lanka was forced to sign the Indo-Lanka Accord as well as amend its country’s constitution and introduce the 13thAmendment alongside the Provincial Council system. It was on 30thJuly that the IPKF landed and on 2ndAugust Prabakaran who had been saved by India and flown out of Sri Lanka and kept in India until the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord returned to the country. It was also just weeks since a supposed handing over of arms though having supplied arms to thousands of Tamil militant groups, India would well have known that the decrepit arms that were handed over was nothing of the type that India had gifted these militants. Therefore, why would India order its Indian Army general to assassinate the Head militant that India saved at Vadamarachchi and to whom Rajiv Gandhi himself had presented his personal bullet proof vest unless India was only interested in getting Sri Lanka to sign the Indo-Lanka Accord, amend Sri Lanka’s Constitution so that it would facilitate India’s incursions and possibly occupy Sri Lanka like Kashmir – 25 years on we now realize that the entire “we are concerned about Sri Lankan Tamils” is a bogus charade by India which Prabakaran realized far before all others and took remedial action by assassinating Rajiv before he himself was assassinated.
Thus, we can safely say that the Jain Commission report following Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination clearly puts in perspective the fact that Indira Gandhi’s orders to destabilize Sri Lanka meant that Indian officials were tasked to gather Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups, train and arm them on Indian soil in a clandestine operation handled by former Indian military personnel and India’s intelligence agency as far back as 1977 well before 1983 July riots. This categorically puts to rest the bogus notion that LTTE emerged to save the Tamils against the Sinhalese after the July 1983 riots. What the riots did was to facilitate and give justification for the militancy and what India had been clandestinely doing could be put into the open as a justification for helping the Tamil militants. People tend to ignore the timelines that would set the story straight and it becomes easy for the media to omit the key fact and join the two separate incidents to justify LTTE militancy and Indian intervention. Therefore, the July 83 riots had been monopolized and manipulated to give acceptance to Tamil militancy both in Sri Lanka, India and the rest of the world as well as plug India directly into the picture as “negotiator” and “savior of the Tamil people”.
Fuss over Prabakaran’s death in 2009
Rajiv Gandhi was blown to bits on 21 May 1991. Plenty of questions have arisen with no answers still. Yet, in 1998, after six years and 300 witness accounts India concluded the case on the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The Indian judge V Navaneetham convicted Prabakaran and 28 others for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi – 25 of them were sentenced with death (death sentences are rare in India and those convicted are hanged). Prabakaran, Pottu Amman and LTTE’s Akila were sentenced with death in absentia – therefore what is India’s fuss about Prabakaran’s death in 2009?
Rajiv Gandhi died in May 1991 along with 17 others at a political rally near Poonamallee in Tamil Nadu where a Tamil girl suicide bomber offered him a garland of flowers and set off plastic explosives packed with 10,000 metal pellets. She had been one of the many women raped by the Indian Peace Keeping Force. Of course the decision to hold the rally in Sriperumpedur is itself controversial as it had not been part of Rajiv’s tour itinerary and the Tamil Congress headMrs.Maragadham Chandrasekarand her son who is married to a Sri Lankan Tamil coincidentally with connections to the LTTE had personally gone to Delhi to secure the event in Sriperumpedur. Moreover, Sivarasan travelling by bus to the meeting knew of the change in venue and other details though there were no mobile phones or GPRS tracking systems at that time. Similarly conspiracy theories abound including the omission of Rajiv’s security head at the venue and various other tapes not submitted to the investigating team or to the Jain Commission itself as well as the loss and exposure of key photographs. The conspiracy theorists would also love it when RAW’s senior officer Kunnikrishnan was involved with a CIA planted Pan Am air hostess who extracted information on India’s plans that eventually led to Kunnikrihnans indictment.
Nevertheless, what cannot be ignored is that the LTTE does not apologize for its crimes easily and when with Prabakaran by his side the supposed LTTE theoretician Anton Balasingham asked to let bygones be bygones and the LTTE arms procurement head K P confirmed that the biggest mistake LTTE did was to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi we can safely say whether LTTE did the killing by planning it themselves or under orders by a third party, the LTTE did commit the crime. If the LTTE did carry out the killing of Rajiv Gandhi then the LTTE is certainly responsible and accountable with or without 3rdparty involvement.
What was equally baffling was that Anton Balasingham’s apology in 2006 was responded by the Government of India with a statement by Indian External Affairs Minister Anand Sharma who said"The people of India cannot forget the dastardly crime that was committed by the LTTE,"…. "confession on their part of their complicity in the assassination of our former prime minister. This has been a well-known fact for the last 15 years. LTTE leaders have been charge-sheeted and declared proclaimed offenders." and when Balasingham appealed for “magnanimity” on the part of India, Sharma’s response was "that would be tantamount to endorsing the philosophy of terror, violence and political assassination." – so what was all the shuttling about prior to the fall of the LTTE in May 2009 wherein India was sweating at the idea of an LTTE defeat and the possible extermination of Prabakaran an order that the Indians first gave to its army way back in 1987!
The order to kill Prabakaran was revealed whenMaj.Gen. Harkirat Singh in his book “Intervention in Sri Lanka” claimed that he was twice ordered by India’s High Commissioner in Colombo J N Dixit to kill LTTE head Prabakaran on 15 September 1987 in Palaly when Prabakaran arrived to meet the Indian generals. Gen. Harkirat the Commander of the IPKF had refused to do so after being told by Lt. Gen. Depinder Singh that an orthodox army does not shoot people in the back given that the LTTE leader was coming for the meeting under the white flag.
Maj Gen Harkirat Singh, commander of the IPKF claims that he was ordered not once but twice to eliminate Prabakaran when he arrived to meet the Indian Generals in Palaly in September 1987. What is poignant about this revelation is that it was only on 3 June 1987 that India violated Sri Lanka’s territory by dropping parippu threatening Sri Lanka not to retaliate, thereafter on 29thJuly 1987 Sri Lanka was forced to sign the Indo-Lanka Accord as well as amend its country’s constitution and introduce the 13thAmendment alongside the Provincial Council system. It was on 30thJuly that the IPKF landed and on 2ndAugust Prabakaran who had been saved by India and flown out of Sri Lanka and kept in India until the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord returned to the country. It was also just weeks since a supposed handing over of arms though having supplied arms to thousands of Tamil militant groups, India would well have known that the decrepit arms that were handed over was nothing of the type that India had gifted these militants. Therefore, why would India order its Indian Army general to assassinate the Head militant that India saved at Vadamarachchi and to whom Rajiv Gandhi himself had presented his personal bullet proof vest unless India was only interested in getting Sri Lanka to sign the Indo-Lanka Accord, amend Sri Lanka’s Constitution so that it would facilitate India’s incursions and possibly occupy Sri Lanka like Kashmir – 25 years on we now realize that the entire “we are concerned about Sri Lankan Tamils” is a bogus charade by India which Prabakaran realized far before all others and took remedial action by assassinating Rajiv before he himself was assassinated.
Thus, we can safely say that the Jain Commission report following Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination clearly puts in perspective the fact that Indira Gandhi’s orders to destabilize Sri Lanka meant that Indian officials were tasked to gather Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups, train and arm them on Indian soil in a clandestine operation handled by former Indian military personnel and India’s intelligence agency as far back as 1977 well before 1983 July riots. This categorically puts to rest the bogus notion that LTTE emerged to save the Tamils against the Sinhalese after the July 1983 riots. What the riots did was to facilitate and give justification for the militancy and what India had been clandestinely doing could be put into the open as a justification for helping the Tamil militants. People tend to ignore the timelines that would set the story straight and it becomes easy for the media to omit the key fact and join the two separate incidents to justify LTTE militancy and Indian intervention. Therefore, the July 83 riots had been monopolized and manipulated to give acceptance to Tamil militancy both in Sri Lanka, India and the rest of the world as well as plug India directly into the picture as “negotiator” and “savior of the Tamil people”.
Fuss over Prabakaran’s death in 2009
Rajiv Gandhi was blown to bits on 21 May 1991. Plenty of questions have arisen with no answers still. Yet, in 1998, after six years and 300 witness accounts India concluded the case on the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The Indian judge V Navaneetham convicted Prabakaran and 28 others for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi – 25 of them were sentenced with death (death sentences are rare in India and those convicted are hanged). Prabakaran, Pottu Amman and LTTE’s Akila were sentenced with death in absentia – therefore what is India’s fuss about Prabakaran’s death in 2009?
Rajiv Gandhi died in May 1991 along with 17 others at a political rally near Poonamallee in Tamil Nadu where a Tamil girl suicide bomber offered him a garland of flowers and set off plastic explosives packed with 10,000 metal pellets. She had been one of the many women raped by the Indian Peace Keeping Force. Of course the decision to hold the rally in Sriperumpedur is itself controversial as it had not been part of Rajiv’s tour itinerary and the Tamil Congress headMrs.Maragadham Chandrasekarand her son who is married to a Sri Lankan Tamil coincidentally with connections to the LTTE had personally gone to Delhi to secure the event in Sriperumpedur. Moreover, Sivarasan travelling by bus to the meeting knew of the change in venue and other details though there were no mobile phones or GPRS tracking systems at that time. Similarly conspiracy theories abound including the omission of Rajiv’s security head at the venue and various other tapes not submitted to the investigating team or to the Jain Commission itself as well as the loss and exposure of key photographs. The conspiracy theorists would also love it when RAW’s senior officer Kunnikrishnan was involved with a CIA planted Pan Am air hostess who extracted information on India’s plans that eventually led to Kunnikrihnans indictment.
Nevertheless, what cannot be ignored is that the LTTE does not apologize for its crimes easily and when with Prabakaran by his side the supposed LTTE theoretician Anton Balasingham asked to let bygones be bygones and the LTTE arms procurement head K P confirmed that the biggest mistake LTTE did was to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi we can safely say whether LTTE did the killing by planning it themselves or under orders by a third party, the LTTE did commit the crime. If the LTTE did carry out the killing of Rajiv Gandhi then the LTTE is certainly responsible and accountable with or without 3rdparty involvement.
What was equally baffling was that Anton Balasingham’s apology in 2006 was responded by the Government of India with a statement by Indian External Affairs Minister Anand Sharma who said"The people of India cannot forget the dastardly crime that was committed by the LTTE,"…. "confession on their part of their complicity in the assassination of our former prime minister. This has been a well-known fact for the last 15 years. LTTE leaders have been charge-sheeted and declared proclaimed offenders." and when Balasingham appealed for “magnanimity” on the part of India, Sharma’s response was "that would be tantamount to endorsing the philosophy of terror, violence and political assassination." – so what was all the shuttling about prior to the fall of the LTTE in May 2009 wherein India was sweating at the idea of an LTTE defeat and the possible extermination of Prabakaran an order that the Indians first gave to its army way back in 1987!
The order to kill Prabakaran was revealed whenMaj.Gen. Harkirat Singh in his book “Intervention in Sri Lanka” claimed that he was twice ordered by India’s High Commissioner in Colombo J N Dixit to kill LTTE head Prabakaran on 15 September 1987 in Palaly when Prabakaran arrived to meet the Indian generals. Gen. Harkirat the Commander of the IPKF had refused to do so after being told by Lt. Gen. Depinder Singh that an orthodox army does not shoot people in the back given that the LTTE leader was coming for the meeting under the white flag.
