India pays homage to former PM Rajiv Gandhi on 26th death anniversary

Reuters:  Indian President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday (21 May) led the nation in paying homage to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on his 26th death anniversary in New Delhi.

Besides Mukherjee, Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also paid tribute to Rajiv at his memorial ‘Vir Bhumi’.

The late leader’s widow and Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, her son and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and son-in-law Robert Vadra, also paid tributes to him.

Born on 20 August in 1944, Rajiv served as the sixth Prime Minister of India from 1984 to 1989. He was killed by an ethnic Tamil suicide bomber during a poll campaign in Sriperumbudur town of southern Tamil Nadu state in May 1991.

The three Indian men - tried as Santhan, Murugan, Perarivalan - were members of a Sri Lankan ethnic Tamil separatist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and Rajiv’s killing was seen as an act of retaliation after he sent Indian peacekeepers to Sri Lanka in 1987.

The three were convicted of involvement in 1998 and sentenced to death by hanging. A fourth person, a woman, was also given the death sentence but it was later commuted to a life term.