FOR seven rambling years, the Jain Commission of Inquiry—set up to unravel the larger conspiracy behind Rajiv Gandhi's May 21, 1991, assassination—has stumbled from one controversy to another. The Commission's interim report, tabled in Parliament last year, led to the fall of the United Front government—it had pointed fingers at its coalition partner, the DMK, for harbouring the LTTE, thus creating conditions which facilitated the assassination. It had also come down heavily on the V.P. Singh government for ignoring the security threat to Rajiv.
The final report charts a markedly different course. Volume II, covering chapters I to VI, widens the ambit beyond the immediate circumstances to emphasise a larger, international plot. Foreign intelligence agencies like the CIA and Mossad, and leaders of some Sikh extremist organisations step in as the new dramatis personae. The report says they actively collaborated with the LTTE and key Indian individuals in the period immediately preceding the assassination. The eight-volume set, 14 chapters in all—accessed by...
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