Prabhakaran death ends Rajiv trial,probe panel awaits burial

Set up in 1998 after Justice Milap Chand Jain submitted his report on the assassination,its term has been extended year after year without any headway being made on the lengthy list of “unanswered questions.”

The MDMA’s present term expires on May 31 and officials say a recommendation has been sent to CBI Director Ashwani Kumar for it to be disbanded. But no decision has been taken yet.

MDMA officials say that on the news of the death of Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman,they sought an “official confirmation” from the MEA and once that comes in,they will request the trial court to drop charges against the “deceased accused and bring the trial to an end.”

A similar process had been followed when Lankan authorities informed the MEA about the death of Akila,who was listed as the third absconding accused before the Chennai court.

The trial of Prabhakaran,Pottu Amman and Akila was separated from that of the rest of the 26 accused after they had been delivered death penalty in 1998. A year later,the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of four accused,commuted into life imprisonment the penalty of others and ordered the release of the remaining 19 as they had served a prolonged prison term for their role in the assassination.

Whether this also marks the end of the MDMA isn’t clear yet. Documents available with The Indian Express reveal that besides dispatching Letters Rogatory (LRs) to as many as 25 countries — including Morocco and New Zealand — and questioning hundreds of persons,the MDMA has achieved little.

Among the tasks given to the MDMA was unraveling of the alleged role of LTTE financer Kumaran Padmanathan; inquiring into the alleged involvement of Godman Chandraswami; investigating the role of 21 other Lankan and Indian suspects named by Justice Jain and pinning down the reasons for Indian intelligence agencies being able to decode only 17% of LTTE’s communication intercepts prior to the assassination.

But there is nothing “multi-disciplinary” about the MDMA any more. Officials from other investigating agencies who had earlier been deputed to the CBI have long since abandoned their assignment,leaving only a small CBI unit,headed by a Joint Director. Status reports prepared by the MDMA show that several countries,from where assistance was sought,demanded “specific undertakings” that the death penalty would not be imposed against any of the suspects under investigation,which New Delhi refused to provide. The CBI argued that such an undertaking would have affected the trial against Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman.