'Rajiv Gandhi ordered army to bump off LTTE chief'

BOOK-ED FOR MURDER: The book says, the instructions were conveyed by India's envoy in Sri Lanka in 1987.

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New Delhi: A former Indian Peace Keeping Force Commander has claimed in a book that Rajiv Gandhi had ordered the killing of LTTE chief Prabhakaran at the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord in 1987, well before the hostilities had broken out in October that year.

According to the book, Intervention in Sri Lanka, the instructions for the hatchet job were conveyed by JN Dixit, India's envoy in Sri Lanka at that time.

The author, Major General Harkirat Singh, says, “I got a call from the High Commission telling me, ‘tomorrow you are meeting Prabhakran and we would like you to eliminate him.‘"

After consulting his superiors, Singh refused to carry out the orders. He says that he reasoned that cold-blooded killings were not the business of the army.

“We are an orthodox army and we do not indulge in shooting in the back,” he says.

Singh believed it would be treacherous to kill someone under the white flag. The army had been acting in good faith and perhaps had no idea that the accord was still-born.

1,300 Indian Army troops were killed in Sri Lanka in 1987. The casualties could have been lower had the army been made aware by the government that the LTTE was not a willing party to the clumsily-hustled accord.

“The surrender of the weapons was not complete,” says Singh.

Going by the book, it is clear that there was murder in the air, well before the tragic assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.