{"id":62862,"date":"2017-01-30T15:12:47","date_gmt":"2017-01-30T22:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=62862"},"modified":"2017-01-30T15:12:47","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T22:12:47","slug":"cia-assessed-rajiv-gandhi-assassination-before-he-was-killed-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/01\/30\/cia-assessed-rajiv-gandhi-assassination-before-he-was-killed-report\/","title":{"rendered":"CIA assessed Rajiv Gandhi assassination before he was killed: Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adaderana<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n

Five years before Rajiv Gandhi was killed in 1991, the US Central Intelligence Agency had prepared a very detailed and thorough brief\u201d on what would happen if he is assassinated or makes an abrupt departure\u201d from the Indian political scene.<\/p>\n

A 23-page report, titled India After Rajiv \u2026\u201d was put out as early as in March 1986 for comments from other senior CIA officials. The sanitised\u201d report was declassified recently by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).<\/p>\n

The report, whose complete title is not entirely available as it is part deleted, was prepared on the basis of inputs available to the CIA till January 1986. The very first sentence of the report\u2019s available (undeleted) page reads: Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi faces at least an even chance of assassination before his tenure in office ends in 1989.\u201d<\/p>\n

It, however, later clearly said that assassination is the major near-term threat\u201d to him. Over five years later, Gandhi was assassinated at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu on May 21, 1991.<\/p>\n

The first section titled Key Judgments\u201d analyses and deliberates upon what likely scenario would emerge in the domestic and international political situation if there is a sudden change in leadership minus Rajiv Gandhi and the likely impact on India\u2019s relations with the US, the then USSR and the region.<\/p>\n

It also dealt with the threats posed to Gandhi\u2019s life by various extremist groups at that time and the likely fallout of his murder.<\/p>\n

If Gandhi fell to a Sikh or Kashmiri Muslim assassin, widespread communal violence probably would erupt even if strong preventive security measures \u2013 including deployment of Army and paramilitary troops across northern India \u2013 were taken by the Indian President \u2026\u2026(deleted),\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, it also names P V Narasimha Rao and V P Singh, who could be the interim successor\u201d and likely candidates\u201d in case of sudden exit by Rajiv. Rao took over as the Prime Minister in 1991. In a section, titled \u2018The Threat of Assassination: Stability in Jeopardy\u2019, the report says In our view, there is at least an even chance in the next several years of an assassination, most likely by extremist Sikhs or disgruntled Kashmiri Muslims who have targeted Rajiv,\u201d besides a fanatical Hindu\u201d.<\/p>\n

Since a significant portion of this section is deleted, it is not clear whether Sri Lankan Tamil extremists were also dealt with in the analysis. However, another section deals in-depth with Rajiv\u2019s mediation efforts to resolve the conflict between militant Sri Lankan Tamils and the Sinhalese-dominated government in Colombo\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

-PTI (Indian Express) -Agencies – See more at: http:\/\/www.adaderana.lk\/news\/38868\/cia-assessed-rajiv-gandhi-assassination-before-he-was-killed-report#sthash.ztjZecdA.dpuf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adaderana Five years before Rajiv Gandhi was killed in 1991, the US Central Intelligence Agency had prepared a very detailed and thorough brief\u201d on what would happen if he is assassinated or makes an abrupt departure\u201d from the Indian political scene. A 23-page report, titled India After Rajiv \u2026\u201d was put out as early as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}