by Sachi Sri Kantha, July 27, 2024
Front Note
This research study was submitted two medical journals (one in Japan, one in Sri Lanka) previously and were rejected for what I consider spurious reasons. As such, I have posted a pre-print of this study in the Research Gate site in Apr. 2024. The link is,
Rajiv assasulted in Colombo, [Japanese paper, Asahi Shimbun, July 31,1987]
I included at least one original content in my manuscript by incorporating a 1998 study by three doctors affiliated to the CIA on the deaths of 261 individuals who held the rank of principal decision makers in their countries (excluding the USA) and who died between Jan 1, 1965 and Dec 31, 1996. Dr. Leslie Pyenson and his associates inferred that 118 died while in office and 143 died after leaving office. Among the dead, 44% died violently, often by assassination, while holding office. I consider this as an interesting and important study; and for those who are interested in its contents, I provide a pdf file of this paper, which was published in the Military Medicine journal.
I assume that my two reviewers were peeved that I had included the failed 1987 assassination attempt (in Colombo) and the successful 1991 assassination attempt in Sriperumbudur for comparison. As of now, not a single research paper has been published on this particular assassination, even by the Indian doctors who conducted the postmortem analysis of the May 21, 1991 suicide bomb blast.
Patterns of Death in World Leaders
INTRODUCTION
To mark the 80th birth anniversary of Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991), a one-term prime minister of India (1984-1989), I present a comparative analysis of two assassination attempts in 1987 (failed) and successful (1991) in his short life of 46+ years. Though 33 years have passed since Rajiv’s death, not a single study had been attempted on the forensics of the trauma the victim had suffered.
It should be noted that prior to both these assassination attempts, Rajiv Gandhi was also targeted in an abortive assassination attempt on Oct 2, 1986, in New Delhi (Anon, 1986); But, as this assassin, identified as Karamjit Singh, aged 26 from Punjab, missed physically hurting his intended victim, this shooting attempt was omitted in this study. However, Venkataraman, an ex-President of India, recorded in his memoirs that ‘my private secretary Ramanathan and my granddaughter Shoba (who were present on the occasion) received minor injuries’ (Venkataraman, 1994).
Previously I reviewed the assassination deaths of two prominent personalities – namely Solomon Bandaranaike and Mahatma Gandhi (Sri Kantha, 2022, 2023). This study on the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi exclusively focuses on the forensic aspects of the victim and not on the politics of his assassins.
METHOD
Available scattered information in open sources (books, peer-reviewed journals, official Commission reports, news magazines and newspaper reports) on the assassination attempts on Rajiv Gandhi’s life were collected, studied and analyzed.
RESULTS
Table 1 provides a detailed comparison of the two Assassination attempts on Rajiv Gandhi. Available descriptions on the failed (1987) and successful (1991) assassination attempts are presented below.
Comparison of 2 assassination attempts on Rajiv Gandhi
From available evidence the two assassins – namely Wijemuni Rohana de Silva and ‘Dhanu’ can be categorized into Type II (Neurotics) and Type I (Zealots) category formulated in 1981. The assassin typology of Clarke (1981) was based on the 16 individuals who had attacked nationally prominent political leaders in the USA, and categorized into four grades, based on motivational patterns held by the assassin. Type I: political extremism (Zealots), Types II (Neurotics) and III (Nihilists): various degrees of emotional disturbance, and Type IV (Psychotics): severely mentally disordered. Distinguishing criteria that separates these four grades are, emotional distortion, cognitive distortion, hallucinations, delusions, reality contact, social relations and primary motive.
Failed assassination attempt in Colombo
When the assassin struck Gandhi with the butt end of his gun, his wife Sonia was an eye witness. She had described the event and its aftereffects on Gandhi’s body as follows:
“while Rajiv was inspecting a farewell Guard of Honour, a naval rating stepped out and struck him with his rifle butt. Rajiv sensed the blow and ducked. It barely missed his head but he took its full force on his left shoulder. It all happened so suddenly that few people present were aware of what had occurred. Rajiv continued with the ceremonial function, and was attended to only when we were air-borne. For a very long time after he could not move the shoulder freely or sleep on his left side.” (Gandhi, 1992)
Another version of the incident offered by de Silva and Wriggins interpreted the attack as, “Rajiv Gandhi himself narrowly escaped serious injury, if not death itself, when an enraged sailor swung his rifle butt at him at the guard of honor ceremony prior to his departure from Colombo on 30 July.” (De Silva and Wriggins, 1994)
Dixit, the then Indian high commissioner in Colombo, though not an eyewitness, had reported his immediate inquiry result as follows: “…a navel rating in the front row of the [honor] guard reversed his rifle, held it by its barrel and swung it with full strength at the base of Rajiv Gandhi’s neck with the intention of breaking his neck and the spinal cord. It was Rajiv’s excellent side vision and agility which saved him. He apparently detected the unusual movement, saw the rifle being swung and moved away deflecting the blow to less vulnerable portions of his neck and shoulder. The Sri Lankan Chief of Naval Staff had dropped his sword and grappled with the assailant, pinning him down.” (Dixit, 1998)
Successful assassination attempt in Sriperumbudur, Tamilnadu
According to Walsh’s preliminary report that appeared in the Time magazine,
“Gandhi barely paused before wading into an assembly that concealed a sophisticated package of explosives. The device went off as a woman, judged to be Tamil in her late 20s, pushed her way forward to the greeting queue and handed him a sandalwood garland. When she bent forward deferentially, as if to touch his feet, the blast went off, triggered by a manual detonator. It killed him instantly, ripping into his torso and mutilating his face beyond recognition. It also killed the woman and at least 15 others surrounding him. A policewoman lay dead with both legs severed. Nearby was a slain photographer, his camera still slung around his neck…
Amid the mangle of flesh and torn limbs was the garland offerer, apparently a suicidal assassin. He back had taken the full force of the explosion, and her head had been sent flying four meters into the photographers’ compound, where it was later discovered with face intact. As investigators reconstructed the crime, she had worn a kind of waist cinch associated with victims of back pain. But the girdle seems to have been packed with three to five sticks of cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine, a powerful plastic explosive (commonly used for demolition work) and was triggered by two toggle switches wired into the assassin’s belt wrapped around the waist.” (Walsh, 1991; Burns, 1995). It was described verbally by a woman journalist, in her eyewitness account, written 25 years later as follows:
“He must have died instantly, falling face down as the bomb detonated, lying there in a mangled, bloodied heap, only his white-and-red scarf and his outsized running shoes intact. His clothes had been blown off his back; only the top of his head was visible.” (Gopal, 2016).
The post mortem conducted in Rajiv Gandhi’s corpse by Dr Cecilia Cyril revealed 22 injuries. According to the description provided by Kaarthikeyan and Raju, “One (injury) was a gaping lacerating wound over the scalp, bone-deep, exposing the skull cavity, with compound comminuted fracture of all the bones with complete loss of brain. Another one had led to disruption of soft tissues of the face, with lips, nose and both eyes destroyed. Yet another had resulted in a compound comminuted fracture of the lower jawbone, with upper jawbones and nasal bones destroyed. Multiple penetrating wounds of various sizes were extensively seen on the front of the right side of the chest with blackening of the hair, and deposition of greyish black pigment. Irregular lacerations were present over the front of the left side of the abdomen, exposing coils of intestines, liver and stomach. The left lung was absent. The right thumb and index fingers were destroyed. Multiple fractures of most of the bones were seen in the X-rays. The body was full of pellets.” (Karthikeyan and Raju, 2004) The woman assassin tagged by the moniker ‘Dhanu’ had been variously named by the media, and reported to be of age 24. One report identified her real name as Kalaivathi. (Anon, 1992) Apart from Rajiv Gandhi, there were 16 victims as well who had died simultaneously (Table 2).
DISCUSSION
Political assassinations of ‘leaders’ have been previously studied in comparative context. Kirkham et al. (1970) provided a statistic that, between Nov 1918 and Oct 1968, globally 67 ‘Heads of State’ (coded as head of government or dictator; former head of state or head of head of state-elect, e.g. Presidents, kings and premiers) lost their lives due to assassination. Subsequently, Jones and Olken (2009) had analyzed the assassination attempts on ‘all world leaders’ from 1875 to 2004. Their data on 298 assassination attempts, of which 251 were ‘serious attempts’, resulted in 59 deaths of leaders. Rajiv Gandhi was also a sample statistic in this study.
Failed assassination attempt
In the analysis of this failed attempt, terrorism scholar Gunaratna (1993) had indicated, “the plan within a [Sri Lankan] Navy cell was to kill Rajiv Gandhi. The nineteen year old naval rating was to hit Gandhi on the head and make him fall, and then the two men on either side of the first attacker were to strike him with their ceremonial bayonets. But for some unknown reason, the other two men refrained from going into action during the assault – if they did, Gandhi could have suffered serious injuries, and could have died. This sinister plan has hitherto been kept a secret.”
The assassin was tried in a military tribunal and sentenced for six year term of rigorous imprisonment. He was acquitted of attempted murder but found guilty of culpable homicide by the military tribunal in November 1991. Assassin had claimed that he hit Gandhi only to disgrace him, and insisted that the prosecution should have invited Gandhi to appear as the witness rather than relying on the evidence of other witnesses of the incident. (Anon, 1988)
Successful assassination attempt
It took days to identify the assassin, though her feminine gender was quickly established, based on eye witness accounts. (Weinraub, 1991) But, authentic personal details about the woman assassin, her age and mental state were not available; despite such lack, few researchers had attempted to build a fictious quasi profile of her mind set, after a lapse of 12 years or more. (Rajasingham-Senanayake, 2004; Bloom, 2005; Roberts, 2010) While Bloom (2005) had incorrectly guessed that assassin’s “bulge beneath her orange salwar kameez (a traditional Hindu dress) bespoke her apparent pregnancy”. Roberts (2010) treated the assassin’s act with a pseudo-religious Hindu symbolism.
During 1991, RDX explosive was available for use only in military circles and not available in open market in India. (Rajappa, 2012) How assassin Dhanu was able to acquire RDX have not been convincingly elucidated by the investigators of Rajiv Gandhi assassination trial.
CONCLUSION
A CIA study by Pyenson et al. (1998) on 261 individuals who held the rank of principal decision makers in their countries (excluding USA) and died between Jan 1, 1965 and Dec 31, 1996, inferred that 118 died while in office and 143 died after leaving office. Among the dead, 44% died violently often by assassination while holding office. Those who died violently after leaving office was 11%. Rajiv Gandhi belonged to this category of 11% among the 143 deaths. What was notable in his death was that it was caused by 700g of RDX explosive (Chakravarthy et al., 1999), a white crystalline powder with the chemical name cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine.
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