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Jain panel deliberately diluting case against LTTE: Dr Swamy

Janata Party president Dr Subramanian Swamy says the Jain Commission's final report and the government's action taken report have ''trivialised the tragic assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and has deliberately diluted the case against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam perhaps to help it in its appeal in the Supreme Court against the death sentence of 26 LTTE terrorists passed by the TADA trial court.'' He says he will move court to remove the reference against him in the case.

The government should have placed in Parliament the Central Bureau of Investigation report on the leak of the interim report of the Jain Commission to enable the nation to know who were the people behind this, Dr Swamy said.

The Jain Commission ''failed to issue the mandatory Section 8B notice to me under the Commission of Inquiry Act to permit me to cross-examine those who had filed false procured affidavits. This is a clear violation of the law and is an attempt to camouflage the truth. This alone exposes the real intention of the Jain Commission.''

Dr Swamy described the observations about him in the ATR as "a crude attempt to wreak vengeance against him for trying to unite the secular and patriotic forces against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition."

He had particularly tried to unite Congress president Sonia Gandhi and AIADMK supremo J Jayalalitha.

He claimed the final report does not contain a single charge against him, nor recommends prosecution.

The ATR has invented an allegation against him that he had travelled to London with Chandra Swami in 1995 and a "wild suggestion" that he had met Khalistani leader Jagjit Singh Chohan.

He said he was travelling with a diplomatic passport and under 'Z' category security. There was no mystery in the visit, which he said was only to collect evidence about illegal payments received by a person now a member of the Union Cabinet, he added.

Asked about the Commission's observation that he was an unreliable witness, Dr Swamy said he was bound to protect his sources in the LTTE as revealing the sources openly would compromise their position. He had, however, conveyed his sources to Justice Jain at his home in private, he added.

In Madras, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general council today asserted that the Commission had not indicted Chief Minister M Karunanidhi in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, but the Bharatiya Janata Party government at the Centre included his name in the ATR under pressure from its coalition partner, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham.

A resolution to this effect was adopted at the general council meeting in Madras. It said there was no mention about Karunanidhi in the first ATR prepared by the BJP. But the government had included his name and revised the ATR succumbing to the pressure of AIADMK ministers in the Union Cabinet and Union Petroleum Minister Vazhappadi K Ramamurthy for the sake of remaining in power, it alleged.

The council cited a portion of the final report which said: "There is no indictment in the interim report of any individual or organisation or party regarding any criminal conspiracy to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi."

Though the Commission had stated that the CBI's Special Investigation Team, which probed the assassination, did not interrogate former prime ministers Chandra Shekhar and P V Narasimha Rao, T N Seshan, Dr Swamy and Jayalalitha, the media had highlighted the non-interrogation of Karunanidhi, the resolution pointed out.

The resolution said the Commission, in its final report, never recommended the interrogation of Karunanidhi. But the BJP's move to form a multi-disciplinary monitoring agency to decide on his interrogation, should be totally rejected.

It also pointed out that when the then CBI director Vijay Karan and then SIT chief D R Karthikeyan called on J Jayalalitha sometime ago, she had asked them: "When are you going to arrest Mr Karunanidhi in connection with the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case?" But they had told her there was no evidence to arrest him and she was welcome to give evidence. However, she did not reply.

Hence, it was clear the revised ATR was prepared and the MDMA was being formed only at Jayalalitha's instance, the DMK leadership alleged.

It was a deliberate attempt on Jayalalitha's part to malign the DMK with a view to cover up the corruption cases against her. She would not succeed in her evil designs, the resolution said.

Earlier, seconding the resolution, T R Balu, MP, said DMK parliamentary party leader and former minister Murasoli Maran would give a fitting reply to this issue during the discussion in Parliament on August 4. "Many buried facts would come to light on that day," he declared amidst thunderous applause.

Meanwhile Jayalalitha today demanded Karunanidhi's resignation following the Centre's decision to set up the MDMA to proceed further against him in the Rajivassassination case.

In a statement in Madras, she said it was not proper for Karunanidhi to continue as chief minister in the wake of the Centre's directive and he should resign on "moral grounds" to facilitate an impartial inquiry against him in the case.

Jayalalitha said, on the basis of serious observations made against Karunanidhi in the Commission's interim report, the MDMA should investigate and file an first information report against Karunanidhi.

She pointed out that the charges mentioned against Karunanidhi in the interim report had been repeated in the final report.

Jayalalitha said Karunanidhi had raised a hue and cry stating that Justice Jain had found fault with the entire Tamil people in his interim report.

But the final report explained that "the expression used in the interim report that the Rajiv Gandhi assassination would not have been possible the way it had materialised without the deep nexus of the LTTE operatives with the Tamils in Tamil Nadu, could never have been intended to mean that such nexus was with all Tamil-speaking people in Tamil Nadu," she said.

"The expression was never intended to include all the Tamil- speaking population. The support for the Tamil cause is different from having a deep nexus with the LTTE operatives in the materialisation of the assassination. By no stretch of imagination such a meaning or sense can be given to the expression as has been given to it," she pointed out.

Jayalalitha recalled that after the special court at Poonamallee delivered the judgment in the case, Karunanidhi claimed the verdict had exonerated the DMK of any link with the case.

But the Jain Commssion had stated that the chargesheets filed by the SIT before the Poonamallee trial court were not complete. The serious allegations made in the interim report were still valid, she added.

The final report also categorically rejected SIT chief Karthikeyan's argument that the focus on the Rajiv case would have been diluted had the CBI probed both the Rajiv Gandhi and the EPRLF leader Padmanabha assassination cases. Hence Justice Jain had mentioned the names of 21 co-accused including Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan and urged investigation against them.

Jayalalitha said the Commission observed that six of the accused in the Padmanabha assassination case were also invovled in this case. The CBI should have jointly investigated both cases and did not proceed to investigate the Padmanabha assassination case.

The Commission said neither the then Karunanidhi government nor the central government, which assumed office later, had recommended a CBI probe into it.

Despite the recommendation for a CBI probe into the Padmanabha assassination case by Jayalalitha, who assumed the office of chief minister in Tamil Nadu subsequently, it did not fructify.

UNI

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