Goddamned godman

Charges that Chandraswami was involved in Rajiv Gandhi's assassination have been floating around for more than a decade, and I've had a ringside view of the circus of truth and untruth

It was on a pleasant September morning in 1995 that a colleague and I drove to the annexe of the Vigyan Bhavan conference complex, where Justice M C Jain was holding the commission of inquiry into the wider conspiracy behind the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. As soon as we egressed from our beat-up Fiat, camerapersons and reporters did what they do in a pack — they pounced on us. Taken aback by the welcome, we understood that our fellow hacks had got identities mixed up: they were expecting someone else.

That someone else was the infamous godman, Chandraswami, who had been summoned by Justice Jain to answer allegations made in Blitz — where both my colleague and I had worked for many years — that he was involved in the conspiracy to kill Rajiv Gandhi. A report in Blitz detailed how Chandraswami allegedly conspired with the Saudi Arabian arms merchant, Adnan Khashoggi, and others to delete Rajiv Gandhi from the political scene.

P V Narasimha Rao, then prime minister, was blamed by his detractors within the Congress for dragging his feet about identifying the real conspirators behind Rajiv Gandhi's killing by a suicide bomber. The Jain Commission of Inquiry, which many believed was kept afloat to appease Rajiv Gandhi's widow, Sonia, turned into a pugilists' ring in which many people traded wild charges, the wilder the better. Chandraswami, reputed to be a close friend of Narasimha Rao's, provided many, within the Congress and without, a legion of reasons to target him with inventive invective.

Chandraswami failed to show up that day, claiming that he was indisposed. Justice Jain cautioned his lawyers to ensure that he responded to the next summons. In a packed courtroom in Vigyan Bhavan, Justice Jain began his proceedings. First, my colleague was cross-examined. His Honour was particularly interested in the circumstances in which Blitz had run a story about a letter written by the then Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) boss, Bill Casey, to Edwin Feulner, the top honcho of the Heritage Foundation, the archconservative thinktank, asking him to conduct a study on the possible impact on Rajiv Gandhi's fortunes if there were an "avalanche of accusations" regarding his assassination.

The Casey papers were seen as evidence of the designs of the world's sole superpower to destabilise India. The Blitz report had appeared when Rajiv Gandhi was accused of allegedly taking commissions in the Bofors gun deal. Chandraswami, along with others, had been at the forefront of these allegations. Since the Swedish signatory on the Bofors deal, then prime minister Olaf Palme, had been assassinated, Blitz's allegations made a lot of sense to many people.

Justice Jain wanted to know from my colleague how Blitz had acquired the Casey missive. While my colleague initially refused to reveal the identity of the person who gave him letter, he later did. The man is still a major player in Indian politics.

For the next three hours, I was subjected to an insistent grilling by Justice Jain and lawyers of other groups about the articles I had done in Blitz on the conspiracy. Chandraswami's counsel, among others, literally jumped down my throat. There were certain aspects of my testimony that had to be explained to Justice Jain in camera.

The reports in Blitz, more than our testimonies, had compelled Justice Jain to summon Chandraswami. Justice Jain scythed through Chandraswami's carefully-constructed defence, making him appear a small-time huckster. Tonnes of sleaze about his ungodly life, detailed by the media and writers like Steven Martindale, surfaced. Chandraswami's statement in the Jain Commission became the reason for the court to deny him travel abroad. The restriction, imposed in 1995, still holds good.

In his subsequent report, Justice Jain suggested an inquiry into the godman's conduct.

The report, however, became a casualty to a fractured polity and nothing came of it. Recently, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), probing Chandraswami's conduct, pleaded to the court that he not be allowed to leave the country. In some ways, the CBI's charge is off the wall: it is almost 13 years since Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated and nine since Chandraswami shambled to the witness box in Vigyan Bhavan. All along, the charge against him was of conspiracy. If he was indeed the one who put the funding together for Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, why on earth was he permitted to move around with the freedom of the guiltless? Shouldn't he have been restrained long ago? And if he isn't guilty, shouldn't someone pay for sullying his name?