Assassinations India

Haribabu was the doer of odd jobs, a two-bit free-lance photographer who lived in a tiny hut with his parents, borrowed his cameras and film and hardly could have known that the job he took for $5 last month would leave behind the only crucial, physical clues to one of India's most brazen political assassinations. The 21-year-old Haribabu was killed in the process.

India's Supreme Court commuted the death sentences of and freed 19 defendants in the 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi but ordered that four others in the case face capital punishment. The court also commuted the sentences of three others convicted in the suicide bombing to life imprisonment, nearly one year after a lower court sentenced all 26 to death. Of the 19 freed, two people were acquitted of all charges.

A leader of a Hindu fundamentalist party was shot dead Saturday by suspected Muslim militants in possible retaliation for the razing of a mosque by Hindus. Santosh Thakur, the regional general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party, was killed by unidentified gunmen in Jammu-Kashmir state, where Islamic guerrillas are fighting for independence from mostly Hindu India.

A mammoth conspiracy trial ended with convictions Wednesday for all 26 people tried in the 1991 suicide bombing that killed former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the political heir of India's Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. All 26 were ordered hanged. "The nation stands vindicated," declared D.R. Karthikeyan, the federal police officer who led the investigation.

World leaders united Tuesday to condemn the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, whose family name became synonymous with India and tragedy. British Prime Minister John Major said the killing robbed world politics of a brave man but that Indian democracy will continue. "There will be times when it is difficult, times when it is turbulent, but then India is a vibrant democracy and I am sure it will survive," Major said.

The Sri Lankan Tamil militant believed to have masterminded the assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was found dead after a siege of his hideout, top police officials said today. The one-eyed man identified as Sivarasan and six others, one an alleged woman accomplice, committed suicide by swallowing cyanide, they said. Sivarasan also had a bullet wound in the head.

Unidentified gunmen assassinated the top religious leader of Jammu and Kashmir state early Monday, touching off an explosion of violence that left at least 25 dead in the embattled Himalayan border region. Estimates by police, hospital officials and eyewitnesses put the number of dead at 25 to 40 and the wounded at 200 to 300.

A string of suicides by key suspects in the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is frustrating investigators in the case, officials said. Three suspects have poisoned themselves with cyanide minutes before they could be arrested, and a fourth hanged himself while in police custody. In the most recent incident, a Sri Lankan militant died Friday after taking cyanide in Bangalore, India. Gandhi was killed by a woman suicide bomber at a rally in Madras on May 21.

Police in New Delhi investigating the May assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi arrested two more Tamil militants, a 70-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl. The arrests brought to 10 the number of people held in the killing accomplished by a woman with a bomb strapped to her body. All are thought be members of the Sri Lanka-based group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

President Bush called the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi an "appalling" tragedy Tuesday as U.S. officials tried to sort out the implications of India's devastating political violence on U.S. policy toward the subcontinent. "I don't know what the world's coming to, but it's a sad thing for this young man to have lost his life in this way," Bush said. "That people resort in a democratic country or anywhere to violence of this nature is just appalling." Gandhi's death comes at a time when U.S.

Gunmen killed the leader of a party seeking independence for the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, police said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for killing Abdul Razak Mir, a former state lawmaker of the Muslim United Front. Gunmen reportedly abducted Mir from his home, and his body was found not long afterward.

To the booming of guns and the trill of army bugles, the mangled remains of Punjab's chief minister were burned on a funeral pyre with full state honors Saturday as Indians wondered whether a new round of bloodshed is beginning in a state just getting used to civil peace.

A leader of a Hindu fundamentalist party was shot dead Saturday by suspected Muslim militants in possible retaliation for the razing of a mosque by Hindus. Santosh Thakur, the regional general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party, was killed by unidentified gunmen in Jammu-Kashmir state, where Islamic guerrillas are fighting for independence from mostly Hindu India.

Government investigators charged the leader of a Sri Lankan guerrilla group with masterminding the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Concluding a yearlong investigation, they said Vellupillai Prabhakaran, head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eeelam, directed the killing of Gandhi because Gandhi had sent Indian troops to Sri Lanka in 1987 to enforce a peace accord between Sri Lanka's government and the rebels.

The Sri Lankan Tamil militant believed to have masterminded the assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was found dead after a siege of his hideout, top police officials said today. The one-eyed man identified as Sivarasan and six others, one an alleged woman accomplice, committed suicide by swallowing cyanide, they said. Sivarasan also had a bullet wound in the head.

A string of suicides by key suspects in the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is frustrating investigators in the case, officials said. Three suspects have poisoned themselves with cyanide minutes before they could be arrested, and a fourth hanged himself while in police custody. In the most recent incident, a Sri Lankan militant died Friday after taking cyanide in Bangalore, India. Gandhi was killed by a woman suicide bomber at a rally in Madras on May 21.

Two Sikhs convicted in the 1984 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi won a reprieve, 14 hours before they were due to be hanged. Lawyers for Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh lost one legal bid in the Delhi High Court to stay the execution but then went before India's highest judicial body, the Supreme Court. It agreed to accept their petitions and set Tuesday for the hearings. Kehar Singh's lawyer argued that his client's mercy petition had been improperly dismissed.

Sikh extremists shot and killed the head priest of the Golden Temple, Sikhism's holiest shrine, police in India said. Sohan Singh was gunned down as he arrived for a meeting of moderate Sikh religious and political leaders in the industrial city of Ludhiana, in northern Punjab state. Bhan Singh, a senior member of the faith's administrative body, was also killed and another administrative leader, Mal Singh Ghuman, was seriously wounded in the attack by gunmen armed with automatic rifles.

A man accused of helping the killers of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was found dead, his body hanging from a tree near a house where police were holding him. Unidentified officials were quoted as saying N. Shanmugam, a confessed arms smuggler who was arrested Wednesday, escaped from a government lodging house in Vedaranniyam, in southern Tamil Nadu state. Full circumstances of his death were not known. He was the 13th suspect arrested in Gandhi's May 21 assassination.