REFUGEE

CHENNAI: More than six months after the Sri Lankan government announced that the LTTE chief V Prabakaran had been killed, the information is yet to be officially conveyed to the TADA court hearing a part of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

While Rajiv was assassinated in May 1991, a special court for TADA cases at Poonamallee near here convicted a total of 26 persons and sentenced them to death.

During the trial, the court, however, had to split the case in respect of three most important conspirators -- V Prabhakaran, Pottu Amman and Akhila.

The case of 26 convicted persons attained finality, with the Supreme Court confirming death for only four -- Nalini, Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan -- while awarding life term for three others -- Robert Payas, Jayakumar and Ravichandran. That Nalini's death penalty was commuted into life term by the Tamil Nadu governor in 2000 is a different story.

The split case involving Prabhakaran and two others is still pending before the TADA court and it comes up for hearing periodically, only to suffer a long adjournment.

Meanwhile, in 1999, the Jain Commission of Inquiry, which probed the wider conspiracy behind the assassination, recommended the constitution of a Multi Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA) to go into other aspects of the conspiracy. It was also mandated to file progress reports.

Accordingly, more than 40 progress reports have been filed so far by the MDMA. The matter, which came up for further hearing on Friday, assumed significance because it was the first time it was taken up after the death of Prabhakaran.

When the special judge (incharge) Ananthakrishnan took up the matter on Friday, central officials filed a new progress report in a sealed cover, the contents of which were not known. As the proceedings too were held in camera, the media did not have access to that as well. The matter has now been adjourned to the third week of February 2010. (Times of India)