Remembering Rajiv Gandhi: A Legacy Marred by Tragedy and Redemption

May 21 marks India’s former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s death anniversary. At the helm between 1984 and 1989, Gandhi was assassinated by LTTE cadres at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu in 1991 during an election campaign.

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The assassination in May 1991, ordered by the LTTE leadership and carried out by a suicide bomber, caused revulsion.

Gandhi and 15 others, including Superintendent of Police T.K.S. Mohammed Iqbal were killed on the fateful day. Following the assassination, the probe was handed over to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the CBI at the Tamil Nadu government’s request.

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A month later, A.G. Perarivalan was arrested by the officials for felicitating the probe. Years later, in 1998, the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) court sentenced 26 accused, to death. In 1999, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentences of Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan and Nalini. Over a decade and a lot of appeals later, the execution of Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan was fixed for September 2011. In 2014, however, the Supreme Court commuted the death sentence of the three into life sentence.

In November 2022, the Supreme Court ordered the immediate release of six convicts who were serving life sentences for more than three decades. The six convicts were Nalini, Ravichandran, Jayakumar, Santhan, Murugan and Robert Pius. This marked the end of a tragic episode that began with India’s disastrous involvement in Sri Lanka’s internal strife in the 1980s.

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