Sleuth Speed In Slow Lane

How much has the MDMA progressed in its probe into Rajiv Gandhi’s killing in two decades?

- Ushinor Majumdar

The Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA), a unit of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probing the 1991 assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, seldom makes headlines. Formed in December 1998 to unearth the larger conspiracy behind the suicide bombing, the agency has been around for the past two decades—working stealthily, away from the public eye. It was, however, in the news again during the bitter CBI reshuffle this month when the bureau’s No. 4, joint director (policy) Arun Kumar Sharma, was shunted there.

Sharma’s posting, considered the fallout of internal strife in the premier investigating agency, raises questions about the MDMA itself. The most obvious question is why is this little-known agency wreathed in secrecy and packed with experts drawn from the CBI and other agencies taking so long to crack a puzzle it was tasked to solve in two years? Why have the two years become 20 without a charge sheet, while many key suspects and witnesses are dead already?

Millions can recall the moments when a bespectacled woman bent down to touch Gandhi’s feet during an election rally in Sriperumbudur on May 21, 1991, and detonated an RDX-rigged belt concealed under her dress. The explosion killed the former PM, the suicide bomber of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and 14 more people.

Detectives arrested several suspects; many of them were convicted and a commission under Justice M.C. Jain was formed to unravel the conspiracy behind the murder. The plot had thickened by then with the names of a god man, a political rival of the Congress, Khalistani militants, an arms dealer, and longtime Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi thrown into the mix. But only three people could perhaps tell the truth—LTTE chief Prabhakaran and his sidekicks, Kumaran Pathmanathan, alias KP, and Kittu.