Confessions of an accomplice

May 21, 1991: "I saw Subha was trying to put Dhanu in the crowd of people waiting to greet Rajiv Gandhi. Once Rajiv Gandhi began to receive shawls from people the queue broke. Dhanu sneaked into the ladies crowd which surrounded Rajiv Gandhi and came close to him. When Kokila was reciting her poem, she exploded the bomb…."

Nalini, the 33-year old stenographer, now mother of a five-year old girl born in jail, proved to be the most vital link for the Special Investigation Team (SIT). She was the principal accused, the only survivor of the five-member "assault" team which killed Rajiv Gandhi, whose confessional statement provedto be the clincher for the investigators.

In all, 17 of the 26 accused persons gave confessions under Section 15 of the Terrorists and Disruptives (Prevention) Act (TADA). Though all the confessions were retracted later, they remained admissible evidence and as a reading of the 1,600-page judgment shows, the versions of Nalini, Murugan, the LTTE militant who indoctrinated and later married her, as well as that of Santhan, another hardcore LTTE militant formed the core of the conspiracy case.

It was another Sri Lankan accused, Jayakumar who first speaks of the two "tigresses" who arrived on May 1, 1991 in Madras as part of the nine-member assassination squad with Sivarasan. Jayakumar introduces the LTTE’s death-squad saying that, "Sivarasan had lost one eye in the war with IPKF. Subha and Dhanu were trained LTTE tigresses. Both of them would speak ill of the IPKF and Rajiv Gandhi."

In his confession, Murugan says he knows Dhanu as "Anbu" and had seen her in LTTE training camps. Giving his profile of thewould-be assassin, he says she used to work with Akila, the head of the LTTE’s women’s intelligence wing and used to maintain the files of prisoners. His version finds corroboration in the confession of another accused, Athirai, who says he had first spotted Dhanu in the LTTE’s training camp in Mathaiya. Dhanu, she recalls, was unmarried, had lost her father, used to drive a moped in Sri Lanka and spoke very little to the others in the LTTE camps.

The first "dry run" attempted by the LTTE is mentioned in the confession of Bhagyanathan, Nalini’s brother (also sentenced). Even before the death squad had arrived, Murugan had begun the indoctrination of Nalini and on April 18, when Rajiv Gandhi was beginning his election campaign, took her along for a rally Rajiv attended along with Jayalalitha. Bhagyanathan also confesses that it was he who introduced the photographer, Haribabu ("he was also interested in the LTTE"), to the squad.

In her lengthy confession, Nalini says she had realised early Murugan andSivarasan wanted to use her as a "cover" for Dhanu and Subha. "They had difficulty in communicating as they spoke in typical Sri Lankan accent. For this reason they needed my services as a natural cover." But her role as a co-conspirator was also clear to her. "…by now I had been mentally prepared for retaliatory action including killing of leaders".

Nalini makes it evident that the "dry run" conducted by the gang during V.P. Singh’s election rally at Nandanam, Chennai, was their acid test. But they failed — Nalini did not make it to the dais and Subha and Dhanu could only hand over the garland to him.

Murugan confesses to the blunder later, "I had given Nalini my Yashika camera to photograph V.P. Singh. But she did not photograph properly due to nervousness. Subha and Dhanu could not garland V.P. Singh in the neck as he received it in the hand. Sivarasan scolded everybody for not garlanding on the dais and he warned that they should not repeat it."

In his judgment, Justice V. Navaneetham hasinterspersed the versions of the accused with the corroborative evidence collected by the SIT. Subha and Dhanu, for instance, mention the "dry runs," in two letters they wrote in mid-May to Pottu Amman, the head of LTTE’s intelligence wing and Akila, the head of the women’s intelligence wing from Madras. In one letter, Dhanu and Subha write, "we are confident of succeeding in our mission for we had encountered a similar situation. We will complete the mission by the month end". In the other letter they say: "We believe that the objective for which we have come here will be accomplished successfully because we had encountered a similar situation (we went very close to Singh)…"Justice Navaneetham has given the judgment a fictional tilt by taking the plot back and forth — using bits of evidence marshalled by the SIT and, then, the confessional statements. According to him, the plot thickens once Sivarasan learns from newspapers that Rajiv Gandhi was, finally, arriving in Sriperumbudur. Nalini recalls thatSivarasan was "very tense and excited. He said they had come only for this…I had a strong feeling that Rajiv Gandhi was their final target." The judge uses a bunch of other confessions to describe how the LTTE’s squad prepared for Sriperumbudur. In her confession, Nalini says that one day before the assassination, Dhanu was complaining of a pain in her ankle and she (Nalini) advised her to get treated in her mother, Padma’s house. "From this conduct of Sivarasan," the judgment notes, "it can be inferred that Dhanu was going to kill Rajiv Gandhi and that is why Sivarasan wanted to make her 100 per cent fit before they left for final assault."

It is from the confessions of Vijayan, another Sri Lankan accused, and Nalini comes the countdown to the tragedy. Vijayan describes how Dhanu and Subha had carefully dressed for the occasion, Dhanu had applied make-up and was photographed with Sivarasan’s camera. But it is the version of Nalini which is the most incriminating. She confessed that, "Subha told me thatDhanu was going to create history today by assassinating Rajiv Gandhi and that I will be very happy if I also participated in that. I agreed. I could also see that Dhanu was concealing an apparatus inside her dress."

She then describes how before boarding the bus for Sriperumbudur, Dhanu said she wanted to say her final prayers and was taken to the Pillayar Temple. They then purchased a garland, had ice-cream and boarded the bus for Sriperumbudur.

Once in the meeting ground, Nalini recalls how Sivarasan was trying to put Dhanu in the crowd of people surging forward to greet Rajiv Gandhi and trying to talk to two women in particular — Latha Kanan and her daughter, Kokila who was supposed to read out a poem to Rajiv Gandhi. On the dais, Rajiv had noticed Kokila. He patted the girl on her back. Kokila began reciting the poem. Dhanu was standing right behind her. And this time she did not falter.

Besides the confessions of the 17 accused, the version of one more witness is relied upon heavily by the judge.It is the evidence given to the court by a former member of the Rajya Sabha and a member of the DMK party, who has been put on the list of coded witnesses. The former MP had confessed to having clandestinely visited Jaffna in 1989 to meet LTTE supremo, V. Prabhakaran and had been video-taped.

The coded witness had also admitted that on July 30, 1987 he had spoken to Prabhakaran on telephone from Ashoka Hotel in New Delhi. Prabhakaran had spoken the following words, "we have been betrayed by the Government of India and by Rajiv Gandhi. I have been stabbed in the back."

This according to the judgment is the raison ‘d eat of the assassination of the former prime minister. Later, the former MP had spoken at an international Tamil Conference in London, where his speech had again been taped. However, as the assassination trial progressed and the role of the LTTE was established, the former MP turned hostile.

Unwilling to let go evidence which hinted at the motive for the killing, technical experts from theIndian Institute of Technology, probably for the first time for a criminal trial in India, did "neutral networking" of the speech and visuals in the cassettes and matched them with the voice and features of the witness. Thus, besides the versions of the accused themselves, his evidence remained crucial for the prosecution.