India commemorates its former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on
the country’s Anti-Terrorism Day, just days after the Congress Party was routed
in the general elections.
Rajiv Gandhi, the son of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi,
was assassinated by a LTTE suicide bomber at an election rally at Sri
Perumbudur, a village close to Chennai in Tamil Nadu, on May 21, 1991. He was
46.
Gandhi became the Prime Minister of India on October 31,
1984, when his mother was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards in Delhi. He
called for snap elections and achieved the best Lok Sabha majority in Indian
history in December that year when the Congress Party won 414 of the seats.
Rajiv Gandhi was engulfed in several controversies which
undermined his administration. These included the anti-Sikh riots, Indian
involvement in Sri Lanka and the Bofors scandal. The Congress Party lost its
majority in the 1989 election despite ending up as the largest single party in
the Lok Sabha.
The Indian Supreme Court judgment found that the killing was
carried out due to personal animosity of the LTTE chief Prabhakaran towards
Gandhi arising out of his sending the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri
Lanka and the alleged IPKF atrocities against Sri Lankan Tamils.
On 18 February 2014, the Supreme Court of India commuted the
death sentence of Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan who had been convicted of
the assassination, to life imprisonment. The following day, Tamil Nadu
government decided to release all seven convicts in Rajiv Gandhi assassination
case. The Union of India challenged this decision before the Supreme Court.
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