Delhi lawyer seeks probe into alleged tampering of records in Rajiv Gandhi assassination

New Delhi [India], May 10 : A Delhi-based lawyer has sent a representation to the Union Home Ministry seeking an investigation into alleged culpable omission in the assassination case of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and who allowed alleged tampering with intelligence inputs.
The representation has been made by lawyer Saneev Pathak, based on security expert Namit Verma's recent claim that the Israeli intelligence had shared critical information with India about the possibility of a threat to former Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi. However, the file mysteriously disappeared under unclear circumstances after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.
According to the representation by the lawyer, during a discussion titled 'Intelligence Cooperation and Security Challenges in the Emerging World Order' on May 2, Verma had elaborated that the intelligence input from a foreign nation about an assassination plan and payments made for the same was lost from the government record after the assassination of the Rajiv Gandhi.
The representation also stated that the report of the Jain Commission of Inquiry (JCI) led by Justice (Retd) Milap Chand Jain has also taken note of the fact that evidence was allegedly tampered with and vital information allegedly withheld by the concerned persons to save the perpetrators of the crime.
The representation claims that it is intriguing to note that the commission's report was not given its due by making the same basis for any prosecution of the people responsible for the act of assassination and conspiracy thereof.
The representation further states that the government at the centre was run by the same party for two successive terms under the prime ministership of Manmohan Singh and the Chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Sonia Gandhi (UPA) but the succeeding dispensation did nothing to punish the perpetrators and conspirators of the crime.
The lawyer requested the Ministry of Home Affairs to order an investigation against the then Minister-in-Charge of the probe of the assassination of the former Prime Minister at the relevant time for the alleged commission of offences including tampering with and destruction of evidence among others to set the criminal justice system into motion to uphold the majesty of law and justice.
While speaking to ANI, the lawyer claimed that nothing was done to identify, prosecute and punish the concerned persons who allegedly tampered with and destroyed the evidence of the case and further went on to reconstruct the records of the case only to mislead the investigators and the enquiry.
In an interview with ANI, security expert Namit Verma said that he had recently participated in an event where he spoke about intelligence failure in the context of the Hamas attack of October 2023 which is considered as the greatest intelligence failure.
"The host of the event wanted me to give an example of intelligence sharing between Israel and India that I may have been aware of. This is the field where everything is done off the record. In Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case the input was provided by Mossad to Indian agencies and no action was taken. This was, however, not as bad as the Hamas case because in the Hamas case apparently, the political leadership claimed that they didn't know about it. But in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, there is a difference in that our agencies seemed to have taken action and alerted the government and advised to increase the security of the former Prime Minister but the political dispensation didn't act on that advice.....This particular file is missing but what has gone cannot be declassified because it was not made available to be declassified. Since 30 years have passed so I thought it is safe enough to cite this example," said Namit Verma.
Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on May 21, 1991, at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu after an LTTE activist detonated an RDX-laden suicide belt. At least 14 others, in addition to Gandhi and the assassin, were killed.