Latest news with #Sivarasan
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First Post
a day ago
- Politics
- First Post
Who was ‘one-eyed' Sivarasan, the mastermind of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination plan?
A new series called 'The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination' relives the 90-day manhunt for Sivarasan, the LTTE operative who masterminded the deadly killing of Rajiv Gandhi. But who was he, and how did he hatch the plan to kill the former PM? read more Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi greeted as he arrives to make an address during an election campaign moments before he was killed by a suicide bomber in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu. File image/AFP On May 21, 1991, a bespectacled girl in an orange and green churidar bent down respectfully to touch Rajiv Gandhi's feet after he addressed an election rally in Sriperumbudur in India's Tamil Nadu. It was then that she set off a concealed explosive device that was strapped to her body. What followed was chaos and death; Gandhi, then aged 46, was killed along with 18 others, including the girl — later identified as Dhanu. This moment remains a black day in the history of Independent India. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD It also set off a massive nationwide investigation for the conspirators — which has now been converted into a seven-episode serial on SonyLiv, titled The Hunt – The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case, directed by Nagesh Kukunoor. The gripping show, ( read our review) gives us a ringside view of the CBI investigation and a closer look at those involved in the assassination, including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam operatives led by Sivarasan. But who exactly was Sivarasan? How did he plan the death of Rajiv Gandhi? And what happened to him after it? We have the answers. Meet one-eyed Sivarasan The man believed to have devised the Rajiv Gandhi assassination plan was Chandrasekharampillai Packiachandran, also known as Sivarasan. Born in 1858, in Udupiddy, a town about 32 km from Sri Lanka's Jaffna City, he had a normal childhood. Sivarasan's father inculcated in him strong nationalist feelings at a young age. When his father died in late 1977, Sivarasan, being the eldest child, had to bear the family burden and drop out of school and begin supporting the family — he had three brothers and two sisters. It was around this time, that Sivarasan began showing signs of disenchantment with the Sri Lankan government. In fact, during this period, he was arrested on multiple occasions for displaying strong pro-Tamil Eelam views. Around 1983, he joined the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (Telo), a militant group. But in the subsequent years, he joined the LTTE. During his time in the LTTE, he was injured in a clash with the Sri Lankan armed forces near the Jaffna Fort and he lost his left eye. Soon after, his fellow LTTE colleagues started calling him 'Ottaraikkannan' or 'one-eyed person'. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Following the release of the 1961 Marlon Brando Hollywood film, Sivarasan became known as 'one-eyed Jack'. Sivarasan was specifically selected and assigned the task of killing Rajiv Gandhi by LTTE's Prabhakaran. File image/X Planning the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi As years rolled by, Sivarasan was promoted as captain in the LTTE and entrusted with specific assignments to be undertaken clandestinely in India. In 1990, he was tasked with the assassination of Kanthasamy Padmanabha alias Naabhaa aka Ranjan, who was the Secretary–General of the pro-India Eelam Peoples Revolutionary Liberation Front. The success of this mission led LTTE chief Prabhakaran to assign him with his next target — Rajiv Gandhi. Unlike the Padmanabha assassination where firearms and grenades were used, another new method was to be used to kill Rajiv Gandhi. The entire responsibility of the mission was handed over to Sivarasan and he hatched the plan which saw him recruiting several other LTTE operatives such as Murugan, Ravichandran, Santhan and even Nalini. On the day of the assassination, Sivarasan, dressed as a journalist, reached the location of Rajiv Gandhi's rally and hid himself in the crowds. As Rajiv Gandhi walked to the crowds, it was Sivarasan who guided him towards Dhanu, who, in turn, garlanded Gandhi and then bent as if to touch his feet. She flicked a switch, resulting in half a kilo of plastic explosives in her suicide vest exploding, killing Rajiv Gandhi and others. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Sonia Gandhi, daughter Priyanka, and son Rahul turn to chanting mourners during the funeral of Rajiv Gandhi at Shakti Sthal on the banks of the River Yamuna in New Delhi. File image/AFP The hunt for Sivarasan and his death In the ruckus caused following the explosion, Sivarasan and his other conspirators fled the scene. However, what they didn't realise was that another photographer present at the rally had inadvertently taken photos of them. This led to a manhunt for Sivarasan, which ended up in the Bangalore suburb of Konanakunte in the state of Karnataka. In his book Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi's Assassins, journalist-author Anirudhya Mitra writes, 'When he [Sivarasan] found that the police had surrounded his hideout in Konanakunte, he didn't immediately die by suicide. He knew the agencies would like to catch him alive, and yet he waited thirty-six hours for them to finally break into his hideout. It's only then that he shot himself through his temple. He was cunning, ruthless, brutal and devoted to his Tamil cause.' And when the authorities finally broke into Sivarasan's hideout, they found six of his comrades dead inside. They had all bitten into the capsule of cyanide that they wore around their neck. What is most ironic is that Sivarasan died on August 20 — the same day that Rajiv Gandhi was born. Also, the Indian Express reports that the residence in Konanakunte where Sivarasan and the other LTTE members stayed was converted into a police station and later the landlord rented it out to a school. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD With inputs from agencies
Scroll.in
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
‘The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case' review: A balancing act between fact and drama
The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case takes a while to find its tone. The show's prosaic title is the first indication of a balancing act between well-publicised facts and dramatisation, subtext and context, the thin line between justice and retribution. The Sony LIV series follows the Central government's investigation into Rajiv Gandhi's horrific death on May 21, 1991, in a suicide bombing carried out by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam member. Gandhi was campaigning in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu for the Lok Sabha election. His Congress party had been voted out of power, and he was aiming to return as the head of state. Gandhi's gruesome demise was blamed on a misguided policy decision during his prime ministership: sending the Indian Peacekeeping Force military unit to aid Sri Lanka in its civil war with the LTTE. The Tamil Tigers, led by Velupillai Prabhakaran, sought to avenge alleged abuses by the IPKF, identifying Gandhi as a high-value target of their rage. The Hunt, adapted from Anirudhya Mitra's non-fiction book Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi's Assassins, begins on Gandhi's last day. Gandhi (Rajiv Kumar) arrives in Sriperumbudur late into the night. A group of Tamil Tigers, led by the one-eyed Sivarasan (Shafeeq Mustafa), is patiently waiting for him. In the first of several miracles for the inquiry led by Kaarthikeyan (Amit Sial), a still camera containing photographs of the perpetrators survives the blast even though the photographer Haribabu doesn't. Haribabu (Vishnu G Warrier) is one of many local LTTE sympathisers, instructed to capture the impact of the suicide attack for propaganda purposes. The contours of Sivarasan's plot soon comes into view. Kaarthikeyan and his core teammates – Amit (Sahil Vaid), Ragothaman (Bagavathi Perumal), Amod Kant (Danish Iqbal), Radhavinod (Girish Sharma) and Ravindran (Vidyut Garg) – assiduously track down and interrogate the plotters. Sivarasan and his hardened aides manage to evade capture. Mounting pressure leads to the deployment of custodial beatings and even the threat of rape. The early episodes of The Hunt have a rough time setting up the conspiracy without boring viewers. The dialogue switches between Tamil and Hindi, with Kaarthikeyan – a Tamilian in real life – bizarrely shown as a Hindi speaker. (Some aspects of Sivarasan's dastardly scheme and the manhunt have already inspired plot points in The Family Man 's second season, in which an ex-LTTE operative tries to carry out one last mission.) After its initial clumsiness, The Hunt gets down to business. The screenplay by Nagesh Kukunoor, Rohit Banawlikar and Sriram Rajan gradually attains the rigour of an engaging police procedural. Pedestrian lines such as 'The Gandhi family is very unlucky' and 'Rajiv Gandhi must go!' (attributed to Prabhakaran, played by Jyothish MG) make way for the dogged pursuit of a formidable adversary. There are just about enough details of the larger political backdrop to satisfy the mildly curious viewer. The events explored over seven episodes remain sensitive, with unverified theories about the assassination still floating around. The show's creators sidestep the minefields presented by pro-LTTE sentiment within Tamil Nadu, or the role, if any, played by politicians in delaying the capture of the fugitives. This welcome lack of sensationalism does dilute the absurdity of the circumstances surrounding Sivarasan's end game. The absence of finger-pointing does not preclude attempts to understand the ideology of the Tigers. A character observes that 'One man's hero is another man's terrorist' – a reworking of an oft-quoted line from Gerald Seymour's novel Harry's Game. Although Sivarasan is portrayed as a comic book villain, his commitment to his cause, which is matched by the other Tigers, is unmistakeable. Parallels are drawn between the camaraderie within Kaarthikeyan's group and the solidarity between Sivarasan and his comrades. Amit Sial embodies the show's carefully calibrated approach. Sial's Kaarthikeyan is methodical, cool-headed, resigned even, whether firefighting with his bosses or facing the prospect that Sivarasan may never be caught. There are solid turns from Bagavathi Perumal, Sahil Vaid and Vidyut Garg as government officials bound by rules but not always contained by them. The overall feeling is of a job well done, despite the hiccups and the meddling. The motives behind the political double-dealing and Indian links to the storied separatist movement are left to other, more ambitious creators. Play
NDTV
a day ago
- Politics
- NDTV
The Hunt: The 'One-Eyed Jack' Who Masterminded Rajiv Gandhi Assassination
The 'wedding' was set for May 21. It was 1991, and a 33-year-old 5'4" swarthy, thickset man with one eye had been planning the 'wedding' for about a year. He had been entrusted with the task of changing the course of history of the subcontinent and he didn't want anything off. Sivarasan was confident. He got together a hit squad and landed in Tamil Nadu on May 1. Twenty days later, India's former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was dead in Sriperumbudur. A human bomb had killed him. India's most sensational political murder was "cunning in conception, meticulous in planning and ruthless in execution", said DR Karthikeyan, the IPS officer who led the Special Investigation Team that eventually cracked the case. The planning was LTTE. The execution was Sivarasan. 'One-Eyed Jack' Chandrasekharampillai Packiachandran AKA Sivarasan hailed from Udupiddy, a town 32 kilometres from Jaffna in Sri Lanka. Sivarasan rose swiftly through the ranks of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), the separatist organisation founded in 1976 by Velupillai Prabhakaran and operational in Sri Lanka till 2009. Sivarasan's fluency in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi helped him become LTTE's prime hitman. His Tamil, devoid of a Lankan accent, helped him evade suspicion. Added to that was the fact that he knew the Indian topography like the back of his hand. His linguistic prowess and knowledge of India made him practically impossible to nab. Sivarasan lost an eye in a firefight with the Sri Lankan Army in 1987. Since then, his comrades called him "Ottaraikkannan" or "one-eyed person". The name got a Marlon Brando makeover in mainstream media and Sivarasan became known as "One-Eyed Jack" after the 1961 Hollywood film. In June 1990, Sivarasan killed K Padmanabha, a leader of the pro-India organisation EPRLF (Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front) in Chennai (then Madras) in broad daylight. Thirteen of Padmanabha's associates were killed in the same attack. Sivarasan caught the eye of the LTTE's intelligence chief Pottu Amman. Sivarasan was chosen for the LTTE's most daring operation yet: the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The LTTE, The Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, And The War Against IPKF Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was fighting the 1990 general elections with AIADMK's Jayalalitha as an ally. Rajiv Gandhi had served as the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha till December 1990, after serving as the Prime Minister of India from 1984 to 1989. When Rajiv Gandhi was in power, India signed with Sri Lankan President JR Jayawardane the Indo-Sri Lanka accord in July 1987 that dissolved the LTTE and "envisaged a devolution of power to the Tamil-majority areas". After the Sri Lanka accord was signed, the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF, an Indian military contingent) was deployed to Sri Lanka for three years to enforce it. The LTTE denounced the accord. Several months of tension followed. On October 7, 1987, the LTTE declared war on the IPKF. The last members of the IPKF left Sri Lanka in March 1990. The LTTE regained territorial control. In early 1990, LTTE founder Prabhakaran emerged from the jungles of Sri Lanka. He wanted revenge. Against the Indian Army, and against the Indian Prime Minister who signed the Indo-Sri Lanka accord. The Assassination Of Rajiv Gandhi The LTTE leadership was alarmed by the Congress's 1991 election manifesto, which spoke of the party's commitment to upholding the 1987 Sri Lanka accord. The idea of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi was born in the mind of the battle-scarred Prabhakaran and conveyed to Pottu Amman, the LTTE's intelligence chief. Pottu Amman handpicked Sivarasan for the operation, codenamed the 'wedding'. The Tigers smuggled 5 kilograms of gold into Tamil Nadu. Sivarasan sold it for Rs 19.36 lakh, which was then used to fund the 'wedding' expenses. Two women were of the utmost importance in Sivarasan's hit squad: Dhanu, the bomber; and Shubha, the backup bomber. The plan was hatched. Rajiv Gandhi, Jayalalithaa's ally, was almost certainly going to visit Tamil Nadu as part of his general election campaigns. May 21 was the day he was going to be in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu. The Tigers were to strike him there. A Blast In Sriperumbudur Dhanu, in a loose-fitting green-and-orange salwar kameez, had boarded a state transport bus to Sriperumbudur along with Sivarasan and other members of the LTTE squad. Sivarasan was disguised as a journalist. He was dressed in a white kurta-pyjama and had a cloth bag and a notepad in his hand; identifiers you usually associated with journalists back in the day. Sivarasan was to 'cover' the Sriperumbudur poll rally of Rajiv Gandhi. He gained access to the venue. It was lightly guarded. There were no metal detectors or frisking at the poll rally. Sivarasan, along with Dhanu, melted into the mob. Rajiv Gandhi walked down the red coir carpet at the Sriperumbudur temple grounds. A hectic day of poll rallies in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh had left him tired and by the time he reached Sriperumbudur. An enthusiastic crowd met him there. It was twenty past 10 in the night. Sivarasan's job was to steer Dhanu towards Rajiv Gandhi. He did. She garlanded Gandhi with a sandalwood necklace and bent as if to touch his feet. Dhanu flicked a switch. Half a kilo of plastic explosives in her suicide vest exploded. Rajiv Gandhi was dead. So were 17 others in the blast. Sivarasan and his remaining squad disappeared from the Sriperumbudur grounds in the melee. But they left something behind. Haribabu's Camera Among the 18 people who died in the blast was also Haribabu, a photographer hired by Sivarasan to document the attack on Rajiv Gandhi. Haribabu's 35 mm Chinon camera lay at the blast site. It was picked up by the agencies and reached the Special Investigation Team investigating Rajiv Gandhi's assassination. The camera had photos of the entire assassination squad. It had a shot of Sivarasan's profile too. A question that baffled the investigating agencies in the days after the attack was why the LTTE would leave behind a wealth of documentary evidence at the scene of crime. The answer was simple: the LTTE had a compulsive need for documenting their struggle. Photos of the cadres kept them motivated. Such was the need for documenting every step of their mission that the LTTE had a battlefield camera unit that filmed and photographed their cadres in action. The unit was called 'Nitharsanam' (which means reality or evidence in Tamil). True to its name, Nitharsanam served as the chronicler of the LTTE's reality. The camera played a key role in the SIT zeroing in on the LTTE operatives involved in the attack. It took the DR Karthikeyan-led team two months to round up most of the key suspects. But Sivarasan was still at large. Sivarasan On The Run After the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, Sivarasan fled from one hideout to another in Tamil Nadu till he ran out of safehouses in the state. He found 11 LTTE boys who resembled him and sent them to various places in Tamil Nadu in various disguises to waylay the agencies. So, Sivarasan would be 'spotted' in the state as a bald Hindu priest, a turbaned Sikh, a Muslim cleric and a Catholic priest, all at the same time. But Sivarasan knew that he couldn't keep up with it for too long. The agencies were closing in, and he had no place to hide in Tamil Nadu anymore. So, Sivarasan travelled 350 kilometres from Chennai to Bangalore in a water tanker, evading about a dozen police checkpoints on the way. He holed himself up in a single-storeyed house in Konanakunte on the outskirts of the Karnataka capital. He had a reward of Rs 15 lakh on his head and eluding the forces was not easy. In his book Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi's Assassins (Haper Collins India, 2022), journalist-author Anirudhya Mitra writes, "When he [Sivarasan] found that the police had surrounded his hideout in Konanakunte, he didn't immediately die by suicide. He knew the agencies would like to catch him alive, and yet he waited thirty-six hours for them to finally break into his hideout. It's only then that he shot himself through his temple. He was cunning, ruthless, brutal and devoted to his Tamil cause." Death Of An Assassin When Sivarasan left his last Chennai hideout two days after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, he took only a 9 mm pistol with him. Sivarasan was confident he would return to the Chennai safehouse. He could not. The Tiger safehouse at 158 Muthamil Nagar, Kodungaiyur in Chennai played an important role in the SIT cracking the assassination case. LTTE operative Jayakumar, a suspect in the May 21 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, told K Ragothaman, CBI's chief investigator, that the Kodungaiyur safehouse had a hole in the kitchen that seemed important to Sivarasan. Whenever Sivarasan went to the kitchen, he would send Jayakumar out of the room. The latter did not know what lay in the hole in the kitchen. The hole, cut under a two-foot-by-two-foot kitchen tile, had in it a thick Tamil-English dictionary with a 9 mm pistol in it. This is the pistol Sivarasan shot himself with. The hole also held two small pocket diaries, a notebook, and a fake glass eye. The diaries helped the SIT piece together the Rajiv Gandhi assassination plot. The diaries contained twenty days' worth of telephone numbers, addresses, financial transactions and codenames. Sivarasan began scribbling in them on May 1, 1991, when he landed in Tamil Nadu. His last entry was from May 23, two days after the assassination, when he fled the Chennai safehouse for Konanakunte, where he killed himself on August 19, 1991. When the crack team from the National Security Guard broke open the door of the Konanakunte safehouse, they found six of Sivarasan's comrades dead inside. They had all bitten into the capsule of cyanide that they wore around their neck. The women died embracing each other; the men, with their arms around each other's backs. Sivarasan, the 'One-Eyed Jack' with a 15-lakh reward on his head, lay at a distance, dead from a bullet wound to his head.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case Season 1 Review: A gripping procedural that unfolds with precision and pace
Story: This investigative drama follows a team of CBI officers as they pursue the assassination case of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, tracing the events leading up to and following the tragic suicide bombing at a public rally in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, on 21 May 1991. Review: 'The difficult is possible. The impossible will take a little longer,' declares the IGP D R Karthikeyan (Amit Sial), capturing the essence of the show, as he embarks on a nerve-wracking 90-day mission of solving the Late Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case. Adapted from investigative journalist Anirudhya Mitra's book Ninety Days, this thriller offers a blow-by-blow account of the CBI's Special Investigation Team (SIT) as it cracks the assassination plot, nabs the culprits, and hunts down the mastermind, Sivarasan (Shafeeq Mustafa), to his final hideout. Co-written by Nagesh Kukunoor (also the director), Rohit Banawalikar, and Sriram Rajan, the series is a tightly crafted and well-narrated thriller chronicling the assassination that shook the nation and the relentless manhunt that followed. The CBI team features some of its sharpest minds: DIG Amod Kant (Danish Iqbal), who previously solved Indira Gandhi's assassination case; DIG Raju (Girish Sharma), an expert in handling Jammu & Kashmir militants; DSP Raghothaman (Bagavathi Perumal), the agency's best interrogator; and SPI Amit Verma (Sahil Vaid), who tracked down General Arun Vaidya's assassin and Khalistani terrorist, Jinda. The narrative shines in showing how this team pieces the puzzle together and leverages its network to track down LTTE operatives—renowned for their cunning warfare tactics—despite widespread public sympathy for the group. The battle between two equally formidable forces plays out in gripping fashion, keeping viewers hooked throughout. Kukunoor also succeeds in juxtaposing his characters' intense and everyday moments. The feared militant Sivarasan and his aide Subha (Gouri Padmakumar) enjoy a Rajinikanth film; Subha paints her nails while guarding their hideout with a rifle; Amit and Raghothaman share a meal at a dhaba, exchanging thoughts on North Indian vs South Indian food just before meeting an informant. The sharp yet grounded Amod Kant speaks of luck's role in investigations, and the viewer is reminded that the derelict building allotted to the SIT was considered cursed—no occupant had ever succeeded from it. These scenes are seamlessly woven into the narrative. Despite the backdrop of cross-border politics and complex socio-political layers, the focus remains firmly on the core investigation. However, the absence of a contextual setup about the IPKF (Indian Peace Keeping Force) and Rajiv Gandhi's involvement may leave viewers unfamiliar with the background seeking answers. Still, the series effectively captures the psychological warfare and strategic depth that ultimately enables the team to break even the most hardened LTTE Tiger. The show's layered storytelling touches upon themes such as how one person's hero can be another's terrorist, and how officers often commit to their duty, even when it conflicts with their personal beliefs. The narrative momentarily loses pace after the fifth of seven episodes as keeping track of LTTE operatives gets cumbersome and confusing. However, in the final 36 hours, the tension and frustration due to bureaucratic red tape peak, driving the thrill to a crescendo. Cinematographer Sangram Giri authentically captures the Tamil Nadu of the 1990s, while Tapas Relia's music complements the mood perfectly. The casting is pitch-perfect—Amit Sial, Bagavathi Perumal, Sahil Vaid, and Danish Iqbal bring their CBI characters to life with conviction, as does Vidyuth Gargi as the commando. Shafeeq Mustafa as the cold, arrogant Sivarasan, and Gouri Padmakumar as the fierce but quiet Subha, both leave a lasting impression. The series proves that a gripping narrative doesn't require non-stop action to deliver edge-of-the-seat thrills. This is a binge-worthy, taut thriller that keeps you watching.
