5 December 2000

RAJIV KILLING PANEL GETS EXTENSION DESPITE NO ACHIEVEMENT

From Jal Khambata

NEW DELHI: The Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA) set up under the Congress pressure to further probe conspiracy angle to assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi has made no breakthrough even in two years and yet the Vajpayee Government has been forced to extend its term further by six years just to avoid the Congress ire.

The agency, headed by CBI Joint Director R N Kaul as its chairman, has members drawn from seven other government outfits to coordinate in investigations on the basis of the leads provided in the Jain Inquiry Commission report into the conspiracy.

These are: Intelligence Bureau (IB), Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Military Intelligence (MI), Customs, Enforcement Director, Department of Banking and National Security Guards (NSG). The Jain Commission report had left behind various clues which its chairman Justice Milap Chand Jain could not pursue and which require involvement of one or the other agency of the MDMA.

All that MDMA has done in the last two years is to travel to Sri Lanka and send notices to various persons named in the Jain Commission report for having possible link with the conspiracy involving Sri Lanka-based LTTE to kill Rajiv Gandhi with the help of a human bomb during his election tour of Tamil Nadu in 1991. The MDMA officials, who are located in the CBI headquarters, admit that they have achieved so far nothing to be anywhere close to unravelling the alleged conspiracy behind the assassination. END