90 Days- The True Story Of The Hunt For Rajiv Gandhis Assassins

At 10.20 p.m. on 21 May 1991, a young woman bowed before Rajiv Gandhi at an election rally in Sriperumbudur, 42 km north of Chennai. And then there was an explosion.

This book is the definitive account of one of the most controversial crimes in contemporary India. It unravels the complex plot hatched by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) to ensure that Rajiv Gandhi did not return to power in the 1991 general elections.

Ninety Days provides a blow-by-blow account of how the Special Investigation Team of the CBI cracked the assassination plot, identified the assassins and chased the mastermind, Sivarasan, to his final hideout. The deaths from cyanide consumption of the members of the hit squad left several unanswered questions in their wake, which this book explores.

Anirudhya Mitra is a journalist and filmmaker. During a successful stint (1982-93) of news reporting in The Times of India and India Today, he broke several stories, including the Bofors scam, Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, drug wars in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, money laundering by the BCCI bank that led to its closure, corruption in the judiciary, the life and times of Indian-model-turned-spy Pamela Bordes, godman Chandraswamy and others. He moved to writing and creating television drama series with UTV in Mumbai in 1994 and also wrote and produced movies in South East Asia.

IT'S BEEN THIRTY YEARS THAT I HAVE BEEN ASKING MYSELF WHETHER to write a book on the assassination of India's former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. It is during these three decades that friends, seniors and government officials have asked me why I have never thought of writing a book even after extensively covering one of the biggest crimes in modern Indian history for the India Today magazine. And when I finally did, the very first question my publisher asked me was why I wrote the book after all these years.

The story 'Rajiv Assassination: The Inside Story' on the 15 July 1991 issue of the India Today magazine had got people talking. While the general response was euphoric, a section of the media felt I was sensationalizing it. The truth is, I had suppressed much more information than I could and had revealed. By the time the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed the charge sheet, which was eleven months after the assassination, I had a surfeit of concealed facts: the former Prime Minister's assassination was the product of a conspiracy; the plotters and key operators came not just from the Tamil guerrilla separatist organization LTTE (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) but had links across the globe. And as the probe gained traction, followed by the seizure of incriminating documents and arrests made, Sivarasan emerged as the mastermind of the complex web that eventually took Rajiv Gandhi's life. It became evident that he was regularly in touch with contacts in Singapore, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Sweden, France and the UK before and after carrying out the assassination.

There have been many theories and conclusions, including the Supreme Court of India's verdict based on the findings of the CBI's special investigation team (SIT), upholding the death sentence awarded to the assassins. The number of death sentences awarded to the twenty-three accused in the Madras TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities [Prevention] Act) court came down to seven in the Supreme Court but the fate of the key conspirators such as Santhan, Murugan, Nalini and gang remained unaltered. The Jain Inquiry Commission, headed by Justice Milap Chand Jain, set up to look into the 'larger conspiracy' behind the assassination, was flooded with allegations against the P.V. Narasimha Rao government, slowing down the pace of inquiry and ignoring. hiding and suppressing vital evidence that could have led the investigators to the doorstep of some influential people in Delhi. But what nobody could throw light on was Rao's motive.

One of the finest officers in the SIT, Amit Verma was later inducted into the commission to assist Justice Jain. Incidentally, Verma had huge differences of opinion with his chief, D.R. Kaarthikeyan, over the possibility of a 'foreign hand' in the assassination. The commission was looking into one Amos Radia and Giorce Betchar as agents operating for the Israelis in India.

**Contents and Sample Pages**