Here is another story from some friends. They say they have a DANKless job, mixing some fiction into fact.
Author Tim Greene wrote a novel called ‘Exact Revenge’ and ironically it seemed to give fiction to fact- many thousands of miles away from the jail setting that the first half of the novel is based out of.
According to the Indian Almanacs- the tithi for March 19th 2008 was ‘kaama dahanam,’ a day for washing away ideas of sins, deeds of sin, memories of sins- and purifying oneself to lead a clearer life ahead. Strange are people, and stranger could be their desires. What is carnal to one could be normal to another, and what could be a sin of the body- for one, could just as easily be the pining of the death of an enemy, to another. On this day, seeds of the Iluppai tree are crushed and the residue eaten as cake, and the oil burnt to sanctify the body… these ancient rituals seemed so right and apt for whatever was going to follow in the coming 14 months.
It was a warm Vellore afternoon when the gates of the Central Jail opened to allow the daughter to visit the last remaining member of the inner coterie of people; those who some 17 years ago had plotted and enacted the suicide bombing that killed her father.
For all the polite questions and familiarity shown by the two ladies, much to do with their exchange of letters and the personal intervention of the high priestess in commuting the death sentence, much of the conversation was documented in the media. For those in the close circle- one assumes the last question between them was
“Did Prabhakaran know about the plot?”
And to paraphrase Michael Corleone, the new young Godfather, a role so well played by Al Pacino, when he speaks to Carlo about Sonny’s death…
“Only don't tell me that he did not know. Because it insults my intelligence and it makes me very angry.”
Consistently over the past decade and some, the plotters and active role-players in the assassination attempt took the blame on themselves and the buck stopped with ‘one-eyed- Jack’ . No one mentioned VPs name, and the SIT in its concluding report could only poorly assume that he sanctioned the plan, and personally choose Sivarasan to carry out the act, given his earlier success in killing Padmanaba on Indian soil along with a number of his followers.
The Special Investigative Team that probed the assassination took petty relief in the transcripts provided by the Indian Intelligence Services from their various monitoring stations, and the only person above Sivarasan who could be assumed- to be in the know would have been Amman, the Head of the LTTE Intelligence Wing. And no further. Till that warm sticky afternoon in Vellore.
Our dashing young PM at the time, seemed to have run afoul of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, from the intervention by Units attached to the Para Brigade flying from Agra to Maldives and the handover of 17 senior LTTE comrades to the Sri Lankans, many of whom committed suicide immediately on handover, during the initial days of the IPKF deployment in northern Sri Lanka. Increasing fears of his re-election and the threat of the Indian Army wanting to avenge their mauling almost made it certain that Rajiv Gandhi was a clear and present danger to the dream of Eelam- at least in the way the LTTE thought they should create it.
Clearances from the hallowed 7RCR came to the MEA to clear the Sri Lankan government of doubts of Indian intervention in the conflict, and that this time around India would not interfere in the end-game of the conflict, and to the contrary we would ensure no one else would interfere either, only that we had the exclusive rights to the end of the LTTE supremo. The MoD with its Generals more focused on grabbing gubernatorial appointments post retirement was more than willing to toe the line, not even bothering to activating its Independent Mechanised Divisions to possible deployment in Sri Lanka. Whatever our nations agenda, the Mech Div (I) should have been alerted so as not to make this a display of wanton revenge. Maybe we will learn military finesse from this episode, possibly for any future use against a newer enemy. The soon-to-be outgoing Navy Chief, much to his credit, promptly put his Fleet out to sail, under the garb of wanting to ‘closely monitor the situation,’ ensuring a blockade of the so-called LTTE Navy from taking its fight or fleeing into the waters. One should closely follow his post-retirement plans to see how well he executed his last Operation as the CNS.
The slow and steady assault on the LTTE started in earnest, around the time that the General Elections of 2009 were announced and the politicians being the animals they are, concentrated on securing their futures without as much time to pay attention to the ‘possible atrocities’ that the Sri Lankan Army was inflicting on the Tamils of their country.
The inhabitants of 7RCR and their ancestors had ‘overseen’ many such ‘atrocities,’ from the drowning the naxalites in the Sunderbans of West Bengal to ruthlessly crushing the Khalistani movement in the swamps around Tarn Tarn and now almost to the daily casualties from the northern state of J&K- both of uniformed men, locals, terrorists- both home grown and those coming in as exports from the neighbors in the West. Grim silence was maintained on the successes of the SLA against the LTTE, and political campaigning went on as usual, and the pro-Tamil ruckus that the local political parties like the DMK and others- was surreal in its absence. Possibly the carrot of being taken in to the new government coalition, the promise of cabinet berths, and whatever else can be used to buy political favors was possibly used. The results of that are clear to be seen with members of the DMK getting portfolios almost of choice and making them a clear leader in south-Indian politics for the coming five years, almost forever in political years.
Years ago in Mumbai, a group of local criminals attacked and killed a mill-owner, Mr. Khatau, and popular folk-lore has it that a young lady of the house, paid the Mumbai (then Bombay) Police to eliminate the many that surrounded her father’s car at a busy intersection in the heart of the city. This saga would have just remained a good revenge story, except for the fact the 8-odd criminals involved, were gunned down in the encounters across the city in the following three years. Of them, the second and the eighth criminals were gunned down in police ‘encounters’ at the very junction where her father fell to a hail of bullets. Coincidental, ironic- anything but, I say. And so is the ending of this story unfolding in the island nation of Sri Lanka.
The increasingly concentrated signals traffic from Mullaithivu indicated the growing presence of the senior surviving LTTE cadres there, and effective patrolling of the seas by Indian Navy and Coast guard prevented the exodus of Tamil Refugees to India- as used to be the case of them surviving to fight another day, so many times in the 25+ years that the conflict has raged.
Blocked and surrounded- abandoned by the same politicians who used and abused them from India, with their ability to threaten lost- it was just a matter of time that the LTTE would be wiped out from its current form. That was something that 7RCR did not have time for and there was a reason.
18 years is an awfully long time to wait for revenge, and they had another death anniversary coming up soon. The SLA moved and with the non-stop intelligence from Indian sources, they affected the surrounding of the First Family of the LTTE on Buddha Poornima. The ‘Wesak’ festival got off to a subdued start in Sri Lanka that day to mark the birth anniversary of Lord Buddha. It was around 300BCE was when King Ashokas followers bought Buddhism to the island nation and its importance rose in the Sinhalese, almost so much that it was regarded as the most honourable and ethical expression of Sinhalese culture.
Their dedication to Buddha almost seemed to have paid earthly dividends, in the subsequent capture of the entire Prabhakaran family, that too alive. Buddha seemed to carry out his action of peace and the one the main tenets of Buddhism was to recognize and obey the noble path to end suffering.
Indian intelligence inputs led the way, and Lord Buddha aided the capture… what followed was a slow and sure end to the terror regime. The family was kept united till such time that an unidentified aircraft from Hindon AFB landed in Jaffna, escorted by a flight of 4 MiG-29s flying from Halwara AFB via Tambaram AFB, and then giving close support to the large multi-engine cargo plane to land in the setting sun on the once idyllic island. The fighters peeled off and dashed to the Indian peninsula and the enveloping darkness that welcomed them back.
Rajiv Gandhi had said “Only two fighters are not ‘the’ Indian Air Force,” when asked about the IAF interfering in Sri Lanka before the IPKF deployment. He was right, that 2 aircraft were possibly 1% of the IAF strength… but his daughter doubled that and added a lone Tamil politician, a trusted family man, onboard the looming aircraft with its high set engines to enable operations from Forward landing Strips. The politician, used to being dressed in the traditional white attire of the South, was a strange sight that to some viewers brought the last scene from ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ where Mr. Hopkins walks off tailing his unsuspecting victim…
The interrogation was apparently more emotional, mental than physical- apart from the few blows that it took to get him to kneel and say good bye to his wife, daughter and youngest son. Almost to ensure that they knew why they were going to die. It was their father sending them to their death, for his actions, and all he could do was kneel and watch defiantly as the members of the family were dispatched each with a bullet to the head.
Charles, his son, named after his very good friend died closer to his father than the others… with a single shot to the right eye. With the last of the bloodline gone, the kneeling supreme was chided for his cyanide-capsules and the pity that the world would see him as a coward, one that he really was deep down under those cheap camouflage clothes that he wore to impose his brand of terror on one corner of the world.
The portly, but well groomed politician, dressed in an Iceberg T-shirt and nautical trousers, wearing Timberland-safety capped shoes looked more out of the Macau Casinos than the regular visitor to 7RCR that he was. He stood up and dialed a number on his phone. The SLA Colonel who was with him wondered what kind of a phone that was…
The Tamil politician on a secure phone wired through the elusive Indian satellite, ‘Sanjaya’ relayed the ensuing gun shots to a quiet dinner table, where the future of Indian politics was being shaped. The kneeling chief was made to look up at the phone while the top of his head the back of his skull exploded to the two 9mm bullets fired by the SLA Colonel.
The scion cheered, while the daughter went about drinking her chilled cucumber, tomato and corriander soup and the mother gazed into the fire place, where a small bust of the family patriarch sat. The uncanny look-alike statue had witnessed the death of a daughter, and both grand children to flight and to assassination. Stone cold, the patina shone almost to signify that the new generation had taken over the reins of the country. And that too with a signal that rang across neighbors and on several continents.
It’s the signal all of India is waiting for. The new India is here.