Category Archives: Rajiv Gandhi

December 16, 2015 · 1:52 am

Rajiv’s Killer Nalini Sriharan seeks Early Release

Courtesy of Daily News, 16 December 2015 , where the title reads “Rajiv Gandhi assassination case: Nalini Sriharan again moves Madras HC”

RAJJIV's KILLERS Nalini Sriharan, undergoing life imprisonment in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, on Monday again moved the Madras High Court seeking a direction to Tamil Nadu government to consider her representation for premature release. Nalini, now confined in the Special Prison for women in Vellore, submitted that she has undergone imprisonment for more than 24 years. She was first awarded death sentence, which was confirmed by the Supreme Court and subsequently Tamil Nadu government under Article 161 of the Constitution commuted her sentence to life on April 24 2000.

Stating that about 2,200 life convicts who had served 10 years of sentence had been released by Tamil Nadu, she said it had not considered her release on the ground that her case falls under a different section of Code of criminal procedure. She submitted Tamil Nadu government has framed a scheme of premature release of life convicts who had completed 20 years of actual imprisonment. A Government Order was also passed on Novedmber 10, 1994 even under which she was not considered for release, she said.

Claiming that she is eligible to be considered for premature release under this scheme, Nalini submitted that she had made a representation on October 22, 2014 to the state government to consider her premature release but government was yet to decide on the representation. She sought a direction from the court to decide on her representation within a reasonable time.Nalini was sentenced to death by the trial court in the case on January 28, 1998. Her sentence was commuted to life term by the Tamil Nadu Governor on April 24, 2000. (Pix:NDTV)3a-dhanu-and-co-waitDhanu (second from left and Sivarasan (the operational commander) wait for the Kill

AA-Waiting 1111 Scene of carnage at Rajiv’s assassination- Pic from www.salem-news.com

AA-Waiting 1 NALINI plusNalini & Murugan at trial

   ALSO SEE

 * Michael Roberts (2009) Killing Rajiv Gandhi: Dhanu’s sacrificialmetamorphosis in death, South Asian History and Culture, 1:1, 25-41 … http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/19472490903387191 AND https://thuppahis.com/2010/01/06/killing-rajiv-gandhi-dhanus-sacrificial-met-in-death/

 AND ABSORB the details in the book by DR Kaarthikeyan & R. Raju, The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination. The Investigation. Slough: New Dawn Press Inc., 1994…. documenting what was truly a remarkable work of detection and trial

 

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June 28, 2015 · 2:18 pm

LTTE still active, warns USA

Robert Blake of the US Dept of N. Sathiyamoorthy *courtesy of Eurasia Review and South Asia Monitor where the title is “US Report On LTTE A Caution For India, Too” 

The American acknowledgement and confirmation of the continued existence of LTTE’s global network of sympathisers and finances should be a cause for concern as much for neighbouring India as much for Sri Lanka. In ways, it should also be a source of concern and embarrassment for Western nations, including the US. “The LTTE used its international contacts and the large Tamil diaspora in North America, Europe, and Asia to procure weapons, communications, funding, and other needed supplies,” the 2014 annual report of the US State Department’s Counter-terrorism Bureau said. Whoever rules from Colombo – and administers Jaffna – and whatever the domestic political conditions and electoral compulsions, Sri Lanka cannot be silent after the US has referred to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) procuring weapons.

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September 15, 2014 · 2:04 am

Tamil Person and State: Pictorial … Images Listed

Michael Roberts

     Contents

Acknowledgements v

Preface vii

List of Pictorial Items xvii

Abbreviations xxxiii

Prologue xxxv

Visual Imagery within Political Struggles and Manoeuvres …. pp. 1-44

Photographs …. pp. 45-208

Postface: BBC Blind …. pp. 209-29

Bibliography …. pp. 230-51

List of Appendices … pp. 252-92

Appendix I: Media Personnel transported to battlefront by Min-of Defence … pp. 252-63

Appendix II: Estimates of the Death Toll among the Fighting Forces of the LTTE and Government of Sri Lanka …. pp. 264-66

Appendix III: NGOs providing Relief at the Mānik Farm Detention Centres …. pp. 267-70

Appendix IV: US Ambassador Robert Blake’s Secret Despatch, 19 March 2009…. pp. 271-72

Appendices V: Inaugural Meeting of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi, Colombo, 18 December 1949 … with Presidential Address by SJV Chelvanayagam …. pp. 273

List of Pictorial Items

Illustrations for introductory chapter

  1. Ecstasy and a karate kick before the kill, 24/25 July 1983
  2. A killing victim at Varanāsi, 23 December 1992
  3. A Muslim shot by police during Seelampur riots, Delhi, 1992
  4. Hindu mob assembled at night during Bhagalpur pogrom, 28 October 1990
  5. Massive crowd of White Americans assembles to watch thelynching of a Black American, Henry Smith, at Paris, Texas, 1 February 1896
  6. A case of torturing: two interpretations

F1: The image and its tale in The Cage

F2. The unmodified image discovered by GSL sources … with tell-tale slippers suggestive of Tiger troops

  1. DiManno’s slanted pictorial pick: a weak attempt to fool the public about the scenario of the Last Redoubt

H1, 2. LTTE video of auxiliary mobilisation for belligerent activity

  1. David Cameron’s visit to Jaffna draws world attention to the anguish of kin seeking the “missing”
  2. Tamils greet Cameron with demonstration depicting photographs of missing kin
  3. Tamil women seeking their kin in public expressions of grief and anger
  4. Tamils abandon Thamilīlam and walk through jungle at night to safety of Army terrain, February 2009

M1, 2. Mobilisation in search of the “disappeared” kin, 2012 and 2013

PONNA CHELVA  GG Ponnambalam, SJV Chelvanayakam and C Vanniasingham, of the Tamil Congress in 1947

2b-Chelva hustings  Chelvanayakam campaigning 13c--Prabha with pistol-2 the talaivar Pirapaharan with automatic handgun … probably a Glock Continue reading →

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September 14, 2014 · 3:17 pm

Tamil Person and State: Essays

Michael  Roberts

L 135a --Medivac child at Pulmoddai

50-LTTE senior commanders -tamilnet

Essay – Cover 

        Contents

THE LTTE AND PRABHAKARAN

CHAPTER 1.….Inspirations and Caste Threads in the Early LTTE … 1-43

CHAPTER 2…..Hitler, Nationalism, Sacrifice: Koenigsberg and Beyond … 44-68

CHAPTER 3…..Hero Figures and Hitler in Young Pirapāharan’s Thinking … 69-89

CHAPTER 4…..Tamil Tigers: Sacrificial Symbolism and‘Dead Body Politics’ … 90-100

CHAPTER 5……Killing Rajiv Gandhi: Dhanu’s SacrificIal Metamorphosis in Death? 101-31 Continue reading →

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June 11, 2014 · 3:49 am

India rejects Cultivated English. Modi’s Gujarati and Hindi swamps the old school tie

Sanjay Subramanian, courtesy of the New York Review of Books, where the title reads “India after English?”

india after english--NYRB A scene at Calcutta in mid-May 2014 —Pic by Piyal Adhikary/epa/Corbis

In the days since the decisive victory of Narendra Modi and his conservative Bharatiya Janata Party in India’s national election, many Indian commentators have perceived a turning point in Indian politics. Modi’s critics sense, in his sweeping mandate, an ominous revival of Hindu nationalism; his supporters maintain that he won because of his robust economic record in Gujarat, where he was Chief Minister from 2001 to 2014. Few on either side, though, dispute that Modi’s political rise signals, in part, a rejection by voters of India’s traditional political elite. Continue reading →

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May 6, 2014 · 10:31 am

Sri Lanka in India’s Orbit: A Discerning Study by Dayan Jayatilleka

N. Sathiya Moorthy, courtesy of The Hindu where the title is  “Re-discovering Sri Lanka’s place in today’s Asia”

22 --Accord_152409f It is not always that a work of non-fiction, however current and relevant the title and topic be, goes into a second print within a year of its publication. It is also not always that public discourse ensues on the book, however elitist and academic it be, and the contents become the topic of a seminar. It is not always, again, that the author concerned takes time and effort to incorporate the valid among the suggestions made at the seminar in the ‘revised’ edition of the book within a year.
Colombo-based scholar-diplomat Dayan Jayatilleka’s Long War, Cold Peace: Sri Lanka’s North-South Crisis has all this and more. Every page of the book is replete with words of wisdom that reflect the author’s scholarship, authoritative academic background and painstaking preparations of a political scientist. Dr Jayatilleka’s early background as one from the global Left, who got frustrated by and with the local Left-leaning JVP militancy, and also possible excessive expectations from the Tamil-Left in Sri Lanka, too, stands out in the process.

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February 20, 2014 · 8:39 am

Assassins at Large: The Rajiv Gandhi KILL of 1991

Rajiv Ghandhi-Haribabu Camera8Rajiv Ghandhi-Haribabu Camera9

I- “Jayalalitha to release Rajiv Gandhi killers,” by S. Venkat Narayan, courtesy of Island February 19, 2014,

NEW DELHI, February 19: Twenty-three years after they were jailed, the Tamil  Nadu Government headed by Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalitha today decided to  set free within three days all the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi  assassination case after the Indian Supreme Court commuted the death penalty of  three of them to life sentence. Besides Santhan, Murugan, the husband of Nalini, Perarivalan, who earned a  major reprieve from the Supreme Court yesterday which spared them from gallows,  Nalini, Robert Pious, Jayakumar and Ravichan-dran will walk out from prison. Four of the men who will be set free are Sri Lankan Tamils. They are: Murugan,  Santhan, Robert Payas and V Jayakumar. Continue reading →

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November 6, 2013 · 2:12 pm

Our Leaders at the Foreign Front over the Years

Chandra Wickramasinghe, courtesy of the Island, 6 November 2013, where the title is “Some historical perspectives in the interface between Sri Lanka and its Asian neighbours and the wider international community”

With a historic CHOGM just round the corner, it may perhaps be apposite to reflect on the rather crucial manner in which the interpersonal  relationships between Heads of State, political leaders of countries in the Asian Region as well as in the West, affected the history and the destiny of this little Island of ours. Very few realize how crucially portentous these  inter-personal interactions  have been in forming individual views based often on personal likes and dislikes and cross- perceptions. These have in turn, led to the eventual evolution and the progressive hardening of mutually proffered generalized attitudes of cordiality/hostility as the case may be, which find reflection at every conceivable level, formal/informal, in the relationships between the  countries concerned. In our own case, it is well exemplified by the extreme cordiality which marked  our one time relationship with India, based on the close friendship that existed over the years, between the Nehru and the Bandaranaike families. Continue reading →

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September 14, 2013 · 10:19 am

KP and Gota talk to Greg Sheridan: On the Eelam Wars and the Need of the Hour TODAY

 Greg Sheridan in The Australian, 13 September 2013

greg-sheridanGOTABAYA Rajapaksa and Selvarasa Pathmanathan used to be the deadliest of enemies. Now they have the same message. I meet the two within a period of 24 hours in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s largest city.

1778588211-kp rudraPathmanathan, or KP as he’s widely known, was for several months in 2009 the supreme leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, for many years the world’s most ruthless and bloody terrorist group. For a long time before that he was effectively No 2 to the Tigers’ leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. When Prabhakaran was killed in May 2009, Pathmanathan took over the LTTE leadership until he was arrested in September of that year. Continue reading →

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March 26, 2013 · 1:44 pm

A Paper Tiger? Sri Lanka and the UNHRC Resolution

Jegan Jeganaathan, courtesy of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies …… http://www.ipcs.org/

JEGANThe 22nd regular session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has successfully adopted a US-sponsored Resolution on “Promoting Reconciliation and Accountability in Sri Lanka” by a vote of 25 in favour, 13 against and 8 abstentions. India voted in favour of the resolution for the second consecutive time.  However, India’s vote either in favour or against will hardly make any difference to the plight of Sri Lankan Tamils as the resolution will neither bind nor bite the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) on accountability to war crimes allegedly committed during the final phase of the war. Nevertheless, it had a ripple effect in Indian domestic politics when the DMK finally pulled out its support to the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA).  This article will critically appraise the spirit and letter of the resolution and the impact of India’s vote in favour of the resolution on Indo-Sri Lankan relations as well as its domestic constituency. Continue reading →

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