Sonia alleges VP Singh downgraded Rajiv’s security after LTTE threat was ignored, but IPKF timeline and uncracked code point to intelligence failure, not animosity
“Blow Rajiv Gandhi’s head off. Eliminate him. Kill him.”
This was one of the chilling messages intercepted from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) about a year before former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, but which went unheeded, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi writes in her autobiography, Belonging: A Journey of Love.
According to her, the message was picked up close to a year before the May 1991 assassination through a Very High Frequency (VHF) communication channel frequently used by the LTTE. It was then decoded and translated from the “old Tamil spoken by Jaffna Tamils”.
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She says the head of the Indian Peace Keeping Force’s (IPKF) intelligence wing immediately alerted the Intelligence Bureau. However, the crucial message was ignored rather than investigated and followed up.
Where Sonia’s account falters
Sonia alleges that the government of Prime Minister VP Singh downgraded Rajiv Gandhi’s security, sending “a clear message, from the top down to the lowest levels of governance: Rajiv Gandhi’s security was of no concern”. She adds that there were further LTTE intercepts later, but they had not been decoded.
There is no doubt that there was an overall failure on the part of India’s security and intelligence apparatus in dealing with the LTTE. This was not confined to the carefully planned assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by an LTTE woman suicide bomber at Sriperumbudur, near Chennai, but also included several other incidents that had taken place in India earlier.
Most people reading Sonia Gandhi’s account may surmise that the Indian intelligence establishment knew about the LTTE’s plans to kill Rajiv Gandhi well in advance but ignored the warnings. They may also conclude that this happened because VP Singh, after becoming Prime Minister in December 1989, downgraded the security cover of his friend-turned-foe, Rajiv Gandhi.
The reality is more complicated. However, it is clear that, in her recollection of those traumatic days, Sonia Gandhi has erred in the timeline relating to the Rajiv Gandhi assassination.
Questions over the intercepts
First, the last of the Indian soldiers deployed in Sri Lanka’s north and east under a bilateral accord sailed home from Trincomalee on March 24, 1990. In other words, from that day onwards, there was practically no IPKF presence in Sri Lanka. So, how could the IPKF intelligence chief have intercepted any LTTE communication and passed it on to the Intelligence Bureau?
Was there perhaps an intercept picked up by a listening post near the southern Indian border, operated by the Army or Navy, which Sonia is referring to as IPKF intelligence?
Second, until it gunned down K Pathmanabha and his associates in Chennai in June 1990, the LTTE was focused on eliminating the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) leader, who was markedly pro-India. Indeed, one of the LTTE assassins, who went by the nom de guerre Sivarasan, later played a key role in the plot to kill Rajiv Gandhi.
The LTTE’s audacity in eliminating Rajiv Gandhi was partly a result of the astounding success it had achieved in targeting Pathmanabha, and the ease with which the hit squad escaped to Sri Lanka. Given this, could there have been an LTTE intercept about the planned assassination of Rajiv Gandhi “close to a year before the assassination”?
Third, the LTTE maintained contact with its cadres in Tamil Nadu mainly through VHF communications. The LTTE’s intelligence wing used a separate frequency. The communications were invariably coded. Now, a word about the LTTE code.
The code that baffled India
The LTTE developed one of the most complicated codes, using the 247 characters in the Tamil language. The insurgent group had been working on and perfecting this code since the 1980s. It took Indian intelligence a long time and many arduous hours of work to break it. Unfortunately, by the time it succeeded, much damage had already been done.
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To add to India’s woes, the LTTE frequently changed the frequencies on which its operatives communicated. An LTTE caller on VHF from Sri Lanka would tell his contact in Tamil Nadu to “add 100” to the previous frequency and switch to the new one. So, unless Indian interceptors knew which frequency had last been used, it would be impossible for them to keep pace with the changes. Still, once the code was deciphered, Indian intelligence generally managed to stay on top of the communications, barring a few rare exceptions.
The Indian security establishment certainly got wind of the fact that the LTTE was planning something big in Tamil Nadu. However, its failure to break the code before May 1991 prevented it from understanding the details. Lethargy and negligence could be held responsible, apart from the difficulty of cracking the code, but this had nothing to do with VP Singh's undisguised animosity towards Rajiv Gandhi. (When the Tigers were rehearsing how to approach Rajiv Gandhi to kill him, they used a meeting addressed by VP Singh in Chennai for a dummy run!)
One of the earliest breakthroughs for Indian intelligence came through a telephone intercept. The LTTE had called an Indian sympathiser in Chennai and asked him to help a newly arrived team of LTTE intelligence operatives in Tamil Nadu, while keeping the information confidential. This Indian was placed under surveillance but, at a certain point, gave the authorities the slip and took a boat to Sri Lanka. This was a blow to Indian intelligence.
From patronage to crackdown
A retrospective look at LTTE activities suggests that Indian authorities may have missed or overlooked several important coded messages long before the Tigers even began plotting Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. The failure to keep a tight leash on the LTTE and its India-based leadership, including Velupillai Prabhakaran, began when the Congress was in power at the Centre and a decision was taken to provide weapons and training to Tamil militants from Sri Lanka.
The picture, however, changed dramatically after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, when the Indian establishment decided that the Tamil Tigers were no friends of India. Accordingly, a carefully laid-out LTTE network across Tamil Nadu was gradually dismantled. It was also decided that the LTTE would remain outlawed, irrespective of political changes in New Delhi.
The crackdown on the LTTE network, which had global links, was intensified as the war in Sri Lanka escalated. By the time the fighting reached its zenith, Indian authorities had virtually choked the illicit sea links between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. Under pressure, some LTTE operatives double-crossed their own organisation without the Tigers becoming aware of the damage being inflicted.
What intelligence records reveal
Yes, LTTE coded messages were intercepted, but not deciphered, before Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. At least one of them, if not more, between LTTE intelligence chief Pottu Amman and Sivarasan, explicitly referred to the planned killing. However, those who dealt with the Tigers during that period do not recall the particular message Sonia Gandhi refers to: ‘Blow Rajiv Gandhi’s head off. Eliminate him. Kill him.’
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It should be remembered that the Intelligence Bureau was headed by MK Narayanan from 1987 until late 1989, and again from early 1991 until 1992. This covered the period when the LTTE fought the Indian military in Sri Lanka and subsequently assassinated Rajiv Gandhi. Narayanan was known to be close to the Gandhi family. Would he have continued to hold these positions and later been appointed National Security Adviser (2005-10) if the Intelligence Bureau under his watch had blundered in dealing with the LTTE plot to kill Rajiv Gandhi?
Interestingly, Sonia Gandhi does not refer in her autobiography to what she felt when the man who ordered her husband’s assassination, Prabhakaran, was killed in May 2009. The one Sri Lankan leader she speaks of with warmth is Chandrika Kumaratunga, who was also widowed when her actor-husband, Vijay, was assassinated. “It was always a pleasure for me to meet her… An imposing figure with an infectious hearty laugh, she’d share, in her deep voice, anecdotes about people or incidents we both knew. There was much for us to talk about together: our own experiences and challenges, which were in some ways similar, both in our personal tragedies and in finding our way in politics in a man’s world.”
(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the article are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal.)
