Who investigated the Rajiv murder case?
The Rajiv Gandhi assassination case was investigated by the CBI’s Special Investigation Team, Jayakumar, who was arrested in the case, told CBI Chief Investigator K Ragothaman that there was a hole in the floor of one of his hideouts in Chennai. The LTTE had built this hideout for those who assassinated Rajiv Gandhi, the main accused in the Rajiv assassination case, Sivarasan, came to stay at this hideout on 1 May along with his associates.
According to a news report in ‘India Today’, this LTTE hideout was built in house number 158 of Muthamil Nagar in Kodungaiyur. However, even Jayakumar did not know what was in the hole, saying that Sivarasan, the prime suspect in the case, used to throw them all out of the house whenever he opened the hole.
What did CBI find from LTTE hideout?
On Jayakumar’s statement, the SIT demolished the structure of that house and the investigators found a three feet deep pit measuring two by two feet. A thick Tamil-English dictionary was kept in this pit. In appearance it was only a dictionary, as it had been cut to make room for a nine mm pistol.
Sivarasan wrote in this notebook in Tamil and English. It contained telephone numbers, addresses, contact details, aliases, code names and payment details. At first the investigators did not understand anything special. But when each page and the information it contained was carefully analysed, a huge puzzle was solved. The key to uncovering the conspiracy to kill Rajiv was hidden in that small notebook. The notebook revealed how Sivarasan was connected to others involved in the murder.
When was Sivarasan writing a diary?
Sivarasan started writing in these notebooks and pocket diaries from May 1, 1991. The same day, he arrived in Tamil Nadu with a team of nine people, who wrote on May 23, two days after Rajiv’s murder. Notes were written up to After that, Sivarasan hid them in a pit and fled to Bangalore with his accomplices. Before being caught by the police, Sivarasan committed suicide by eating a cyanide capsule along with his colleagues.
In the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, the lower court sentenced 26 convicts to death. The Supreme Court acquitted 19 people in May 1999, while the death sentences of four of the remaining seven convicts, Nalini, Murugan alias Sriharan, Santhan and Pararivalan, were upheld. The death sentences of Ravichandran, Robert Pius and Jayakumar were commuted to life imprisonment.
Nalini, the accused in this case, was two months pregnant at the time of the incident. When he was sentenced to death, it was commuted to life imprisonment on the appeal of Congress leader Sonia Gandhi.
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