Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi escaped an attempt on his life by a Sri Lankan soldier in front of the Presidential Palace where he was inspecting a Guard of Honour before leaving for India.
Mr Gandhi was hit with the butt of a rifle by the sailor who formed part of the naval contingent that had been lined up to present the Guard of Honour.
The Prime Minister was about to complete his inspection of the Guard of Honour when the soldier reversed his rifle and swung it across, aiming it at Mr Gandhi’s head. Luckily, Mr Rajiv Gandhi’s reflexes worked. He fell something coming on to him and ducked. Instead of the head, the Prime Minister’s shoulder took the blow and absorbed its impact.
Two members of the Prime Minister’s personal security - Mr G. S. Jamwal and Mr Mohinder Kumar pounced upon the assailant in the white naval uniform and pushed him away, helped in the process by some Sri Lankan security personnel. The name of the assailant, who belongs to the Sri Lankan Navy, is not yet known.
Undaunted, Mr Gandhi went ahead inspecting the Guard of Honour and joined President Julius Jayewardene, his Ministers and other dignitaries who were standing under a shamiana nearby to bid farewell.
{{/usCountry}}Undaunted, Mr Gandhi went ahead inspecting the Guard of Honour and joined President Julius Jayewardene, his Ministers and other dignitaries who were standing under a shamiana nearby to bid farewell.
{{/usCountry}}Only the visual media men were allowed at the stretch of the road between the Presidential Palace and the General Post Office where Mr Rajiv Gandhi was attacked. The Prime Minister himself gave this account to the newsmen on board his aircraft as he journeyed back home.
He said there was a slight interruption during the Guard of Honour but the ceremony continued.
Q: What had exactly happened?
Mr Gandhi: “It was something. I was clobbered on the side of the left shoulder. A little below the ear.” (He put his hand on the part of the neck on left side below the ear.) Doctors call this area mastoid. An injury a couple of inches above this point and below the head in the paranoital area can be serious.
Q: What had exactly hit you?
Mr Gandhi: It was something. Asked if it was the butt of a gun, Mr Gandhi said, “some of your photographers might have got it on their films.” A little later, the Prime Minister again answered questions and gave more detail. He said: “As I was inspecting the Guard of Honour and as I walked past one person at one point of time. I saw through the corner of my left eye, some movement and I saw a reverse gun coming up. I sort of ducked down a little bit in a reflex action. By my ducking he missed my head and the brunt of the blow came on my shoulder below the left ear. That is how the blow got absorbed.”
“You can see a lump”, Mr Gandhi said and pointed to his neck.
He said he continued with what “we are doing”, meaning thereby that he went through the ceremony. He went to the helipad in a bullet-proof car and was flown to the airport in a Sri Lankan Air Force chopper.
Q: Was it an assassination attempt?
Mr Gandhi: This is for you to decide.
Q: What could be the motive behind the action?
Mr Gandhi: It is for you to investigate. You have some investigative reporters.
Mr Jamwal, the personal security officer belonging to the Special Protection Group, who pounced on the Sri Lankan naval soldier, declined to say anything about the incident.
An Indian High Commission official present at the farewell ceremony said, “it was touch and go. The blow was dodged by the Prime Minister, slightly bruising his shoulder.”
President Jayewardene, however, maintained that what happened was that the naval rating “fainted” and fell on Mr Gandhi. However, Mr Jayewardene conveyed his regrets to the Prime Minister.
“It was such a narrow thing,” said Tamil Nadu Food Minister S. Ramachandran, who as a member of the Prime Minister’s delegation was present at the ceremony and standing next to President Jayewardene. He jotted down this remark in the copy of the PM’s programme he was having in his hand.
The attack on the Prime Minister took place a day after he and President Jayewardene signed the landmark agreement aimed at ending ethnic strife in Sri Lanka.
The agreement is receiving hostile reception from the Sinhala-speaking sections, although both the Prime Minister and President Jayewardene are rather confident that it will find wider acceptance as more and more people come to know about its beneficial aspects for Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan Government and the ruling party are divided on it.
Mr Prem Prakash of the international TV news agency, Visnews, who was present on the spot filming the farewell ceremony, said: “It was a hot and humid morning as I reached in front of the President’s Palace to cover the Guard of Honour. Mr Gandhi was almost at the end of the inspection of the Guard of Honour presented by the Sri Lankan Navy, when, through the view-finder of my camera, I saw a commotion in the ranks. A fellow was bodily lifted and taken to the rear of the Guard of Honour.
Then, there was some struggle between the police and the navyman, perhaps, to arrest him. Ultimately, the Navy took him away. The whole thing lasted not more than a minute.”
Q: What did the Indian security do?
Mr Prem Prakash: “Indian security closed in on Mr Gandhi. They were doing their job.”
Press Information Bureau photographer Devendra Mohan in his first-hand account said: “After the incident, the Sri Lankan naval police thoroughly searched the man from top to toe. Nothing was found on his person. That is all I saw.
Q: Did you see the butt of the gun?
Prem: I saw only the commotion.
Answering questions, Mr Rajiv Gandhi said the attack on him will have no impact on the implementation of the Indo-Sri Lankan agreement. He said he had full confidence in Mr Jayewardene’s capacity to implement the accord.
India, he said, had flown peacekeeping troops to Northern and Eastern provinces to enable President Jayewardene to move Sri Lankan troops to the South. He said India has also lent transport aircraft to Sri Lanka so that it can move its troops to the South.
This was not the first time India had sent troops to Sri Lanka. Twice earlier in the 1976 India had sent troops on Sri Lankan request.
The sailor has been taken into custody. The Sri Lankan Government has indicated that Indian High Commission officials would be allowed to interrogate the sailor.
A report from New Delhi adds. A second-to-second recording of the incident by Doordarshan shows that the rifle slipped out of the sailor’s hands and hit the Prime Minister’s shoulder as he ducked to save himself. The recording was beamed during the University Grants Commission broadcast at 4 p.m. on the national channel.
Although there were people between the television camera and Mr Gandhi and the shot was not very clear in the commotion, the clip clearly shows Mr Gandhi bending down unruf0ed and the rifle falling to the ground after hitting him.
Even as the other sailors in the Guard of Honour stood in attention, security guards pounced on the medium-built youthful sailor.
SECOND ATTEMPT: Agencies add: Mr Gandhi is one of the most well-guarded leaders in the world today, yet the attempt on his life in Colombo today was the second in less than a year.
On Oct. 2 last year, he had a close brush with death when a person hiding in bushes at the Gandhi Samadhi in New Delhi fired at him. Mr Gandhi escaped as the bullet was fired from a long range.
Late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi also had escaped an attempt on her life in Colombo in January 1976 during the Non-Aligned Summit meeting.
An armed Sinhalese had scaled the wall of the bungalow where she was staying in a bid to assassinate her. But the alert Indian and Sri Lankan guards shot dead the intruder.