Callous delay led to current furore

CHENNAI: The death sentence given to Rajiv Gandhi assassination convicts Perarivalan, Santhan and Murugan would not have gained so much public attention and triggered agitations seeking for clemency had they been hanged ten years ago, a retired inspector who was part of the CBI team that investigated the case, said.Mohanraj,  who was then part of the tracking team, blamed the subsequent governments that made an issue out of it. “The three convicts very well knew about the assassination plot even before it happened. They are not innocents. It is just that they were then young blood and wanted to do something for the movement,” he said.Perarivalan was charged with buying a motorcycle to facilitate quick movement for himself and one of the other co-conspirators and arranging payment for printing a book titled ‘The Satanic Force’ and sending a copy to LTTE chief V Prabhakaran through Sivarasan. He handed over another copy to Murugan (co-convict). He was also charged with purchasing and providing a battery for operating the wireless equipment and two battery cells for use as detonator in the belt bomb used by Dhanu, he said.“I don’t know much about Perarivalan but he had mentioned about me in his blog, which is a lie. Murugan would have murdered Rajiv Gandhi had Dhanu failed to do it. Murugan had direct contact with Prabhakaran,” Mohanraj claimed.Mohanraj claimed that investigations were tardy and allowed the main culprits to go scot free.  “I pointed out that the investigations were not being carried out the way it was supposed to be, including a simultaneous raid that we were supposed to conduct at seven places across the State but was called off in the last minute. A lot of changes could have happened had we gone ahead with the raid,” he claimed.