The case for the LTTE

Topic started by vohsendhan (@ 202.88.133.66) on Sat Apr 20 10:06:41 .
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The Vital Questions on LTTE



Mr. Justice Krishna Iyer questions


Excerpts from the statement quoted in the FRONTLINE, June 22- July 5 :1991



"….Was the investigative instrument politically guided to look for LTTE culprits?…Are we, in India's criminological advances, living simultaneously in third degree primitively and the 21st century? Did the police suffer from the Tamil tiger mind-set?"



Mr. Vajpayee suspects Sinhala involvement


Excerpts from a report in THE HINDU, June 6. 1991:



"The BJP leader Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee today… said the activities of the Sinhala terrorists should also be checked along with those of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). …. Elaborating his suspicion on the Sinhala involvement in the assassination, Mr. Vajpayee said the attack on Rajiv Gandhi by a naval rating during his visit to Sri Lanka should be reinvestigated…"



Excerpts from a report captioned "Journalist arranged meeting"
which appeared in the INDIAN EXPRESS, June 12, 1991:


"The reported meeting between Rajiv Gandhi and two LTTE emissaries was arranged by a prominent southern daily newspaper, top Tiger sources have said. Mr. Gandhi is said to have met Kasi Anandan and London based businessman Arjuna Sittambalam in two separate meetings on March 5 and in the second week of March this year. A woman journalist of the newspaper acted as the intermediary for the meetings, according to the sources who requested anonymity."


Excerpts from the article of columnist M.P. Sunil
in the ILLUSTARATED WEEKLY OF INDIA, June 8-14, 1991:


"…The CBI team that went to Colombo to try and identify the alleged assassin through militant groups there, have again been sent on a wild goose chase with rival groups assigning different identities to the woman in the photographs. One group claimed that it is a former LTTE commando, Sumati. Another identifies her as an LTTE suicide squad member Malati. A third group identifies her as Akileswari.. The list is unending. Quite obviously the investigating team has erred in prejudging issues and attributing the murder to the LTTE. Considering that all the other Tamil militant groups in Sri Lanka are opposed to the LTTE, they are all obviously working hard to have the blame pinned on the Tigers. A course that is not exactly opposed to the intelligence and investigating agencies' "line of thinking."


T.N.Police Chief Mr. Mohandas questions.

Excerpts from an article in the ASAHI EVENING NEWS, Japan, June 8, 1991
by Moses Manoharan of Reuters:



"Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar has been quoted several times as saying the Tigers were definitely to blame and that the question remaining was whether they were acting as agents for someone else. He has not said what his evidence was. Others, including former Tamil Nadu Police Chief K. Mohandas, are not yet sure. "There are many question marks", said Mohandas, an authority on separatist groups in India…..

Mohandas agreed the question of motive was still open. "In a whodunit WHY is the first important aspect. HOW and WHO come afterward", he said. He said a three-month government deadline for a report on the assassination might put undue pressure on investigators and tempt them to make evidence fit the theory. "I know the psychology of police in this country. If you set time limits, the police will come up with an accused.", he said.


Excerpts from the news item "LTTE emissary meets SIT?"
in the INDIAN EXPRESS, June 14.


"LTTE emissary Kasi Anandan has met the Special Investigation Team members in the city, according to a source. It is not yet clear whether Mr. Kasi Anandan was summoned by the investigators or whether he met them voluntarily. SIT chief D.R. Karthigeyan declined to comment on this. The LTTE has denied responsibility for the assassination and even offered to help in the probe…."


Excerpts from a column in the BLITZ :


"With the early and easy acceptance of LTTE complicity in the murder of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi- a theory that may or may not have validity-one important avenue appears to have been completely ignored so far: the role of the Colombo government and its Western backers in the whole affair. Nor has the idea been seriously pursued of a mercenary being recruited by an external agency to do the job"…. "Don't forget Colombo's own vested interest in the whole affair," says a top official. "It could be that they are trying to be very helpful - it could also be an attempt to capitalize on the situation to deal a deadly blow to a political adversary. If it can be definitely fixed that the LTTE was in some way involved, nobody would stand to benefit more than Colombo. Its main adversary would then lose the sanctuary (in Tamil Nadu) that kept alive during the most difficult periods". Other analysts, too point out that Colombo's equation with Rajiv was "at least as bad as the LTTE's was".



Excerpts from an article written by Mr. N. Ram
and published in THE INDEPENDENT, Bombay
on June 6, 1991:



"….Unsurprisingly high on the investigators' priorities is the LTTE, the most feared armed militant organization in this part of the world. Its deadly capabilities have been proved in the field against two armies and against a host of political adversaries in Sri Lanka as well as in India. After some initial vacillation and confusion within the intelligence agencies (as can be judged from the plants and reports in the press), the needle of suspicion - to recall the tragically quaint phase culled from a controversial inquiry into the assassination of Rajiv's mother - swung magnetically towards this organization.

Two governments, the Congress-I organization in Tamil Nadu (but, curiously, not Jayalalitha's AIADMK) and the remnants of Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups savaged by the LTTE in the post-1983 period have been quick to allege that this organization, and no one else, could have committed the deed. Further, public opinion poll is likely to establish that. But high suspicion and evidence are two completely different things - unless we are dealing with kangaroo courts, which we are not……….


Better understanding


In my view, Rajiv Gandhi gained a better understanding of the problem and the nature of the challenge during his year-and-a-half as opposition leader. There are some 2,60,000 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in India, which cannot get away with pursuing an isolationist, we-wash-our-hands-off policy towards the ethnic conflict of Sri Lanka - in which India had a deep hand from 1983. Given the human fallout, the geography and the 'geo-political' realities, India and especially Tamil Nadu cannot escape the effects of the crisis.

In mid-1990, Rajiv Gandhi spoke informally about his concerns over the prospect of the Sri Lankan state committing 'genocide' against the Tamils - he expressed his sentiments over the 'uncivilised' act of a government bombing its own people, innocent civilians alongside the armed militants. There are some indications that he appreciated the fighting spirit of the LTTE, although he clearly disapproved of its deadly methods and its Eelam demand.


Delhi meetings


Without understanding the content and orientation of this policy and the post-failure understanding of its partial architect, we cannot make any sense of the meeting Rajiv Gandhi had at 4.30 pm on March 5, 1991, with an authorized, but politically lightweight LTTE representative, Kasi Anandan, and of a subsequent discussion he had with an LTTE sympathizer, Arjuna Sithambalam. The spokesman of the Congress-I has shown weak knees and a remarkable lack of intelligence in denying the fact of these meetings, which have become quite relevant to the investigations. In fact, they have behaved as if they were responding to Bofors allegations.





The fact that the March 5,meeting took place at Rajiv Gandhi's New Delhi residence does not in my political understanding, rule out the LTTE from the shortlist of suspects. But it needs to be taken into account in any investigation of the background of the assassination and the possible motives. At this stage, it would seem to raise the problem of contra-indications…."

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