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Rajiv Gandhi asked Sikh officer of IPKF to kill
LTTE chief during meeting
WSN Network

New Delhi: Nation states cast away scruples at the drop of a hat but how blatant may the leader of a nation get has been shown by an Indian Army Major General Harkirat Singh whose just released book claims that Rajiv Gandhi ordered the killing of LTTE chief Prabhakaran at the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord in 1987.

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, an ex-IPKF Commander, writes that he got "a call from the High Commission telling me, ‘tomorrow you are meeting Prabhakran and we would like you to eliminate him.'” He, however, refused to carry out the orders. He said he believed it would be treacherous to kill someone under the white flag. 1,300 Indian Army troops were killed in Sri Lanka in 1987 in the operation which is often cited as the most short sighted intervention in South Asia.

The book has a first hand account of the initial induction and operations of the IPKF in Sri Lanka and describes the trials and tribulations of the IPKF as it grappled with an operational situation inexorably tangled with politics. It gives an insight into how inadequately prepared the IPKF was for the task set out for it and explains how difficult it was to fight the LTTE guerrilla, especially when the Indian government itself was not clear about its political and military aims. The book is being hailed as a "compelling narrative" and "an important addition to the extensive literature on the IPKF in Sri Lanka."
 

12 December, 2007
 

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