On May 21, 1991, former Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi reached Chennai by an afternoon-evening flight. After two hours, he was bound for Sriperumbudur, an industrial centre in Kanchipuram district of Tamil Nadu and just 40 km from Chennai. Rajiv was busy campaigning for the mid-term elections which had been announced after the VP Singh-led Janata Dal government had collapsed in October, 1990. The Congress was keen to avenge the humiliation it suffered in the 1989 elections.
Rajiv rode a white ambassador in the middle of the motorcade as he neared the point where he was to address a rally in support of the Congress candidate from the Sriperumbudur Lok Sabha constituency. At around 10.10 pm, Rajiv reached Sriperumbudur. He was making his way to the dais, meeting and greeting people, shaking their hands, letting them garland him. In the crowd stood Thenmozhi Rajaratnam aka Dhanu. Rajaratnam had the belt bomb with the explosive material in her lower back region and the power pack, two switches and the circuitry in front. One switch initiated the circuitry and the other activated the bomb. The explosive used was an RDX, about 10,000 steel balls of 2 mm diameter were embedded in the bomb. After garlanding Rajiv, Rajaratnam evidently stooped to touch his feet and activated the explosive. Rajiv might have tried to stop her; his face bore the impact of the blast. A little distance away stood Sivarasan, the mastermind.
The All India Radio and Doordarshan broke the news to the nation late at night. Rajiv became the second Gandhi after her mother to be assassinated. While Indira Gandhi fell to assassins’ bullets for her dogged stance against Khalistan militancy, Rajiv was killed for sending an Indian Peace Keeping Force into Sri Lanka in 1987 to aid Colombo in its fight against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
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