23 May 2000

From Jal Khambata

NEW DELHI: The Multi-Department Monitoring Agency (MDMA) inquiring into the Rajiv Gandhi assassination conspiracy is sending letters of rogatory to 21 countries, seeking all possible information about monetary or logical support that may have been provided to bump off the former prime minister.

The letters of rogatory were obtained from a CBI court in Delhi on Monday and they were now being despatched to the Indian embassies and missions in the respective countries for delivery to the governments there, the CBI sources said.

The MDMA would wait for three months for response to the letters of rogatory and then a team of senior officers may visit six or seven countries where some kind of information may be available about help obtained by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to conspire and kill the former Prime Minister.

The MDMA, headed by the CBI, includes officers drawn from Intelligence Bureau (IB), Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Department of Revenue and other related outfits for coordinated action to unearth the conspiracy as a follow-up action of the Jain Inquiry Commission.

Seventeen months have, however, passed since the Vajpayee Government constituted the MDMA but it has not moved practically even an inch. Even these letters of rogatory were triggered by a review meeting held by the Union Home Secretary last week to know the progress so far made by the agency.

The Home Secretary is believed to have stated at the meeting that the government may prefer to close down the MDMA but for the political compulsions as the Congress may kick off protests. He, however, pointed out that the Congress may start protesting even if it learnt that the MDMA was making no headways at all. The meeting was attended among others by the CBI chief. END.