Key witness in Rajiv case questions CBI-led probe

A lawyer, closely associated with the probe by the Jain Commission into the conspiracy aspect of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, has claimed there were lapses and shortcomings in the CBI-led investigations.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, Ramesh Dalal, one of the key witnesses before the Justice Milap Chand Jain panel, has also sought that the CBI-led Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA) should submit its final report within a time- frame of three months.
The MDMA, comprising several agencies like CBI, IB, R&AW, Enforcement Directorate and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, was set up in August 1998 to further probe all leads thrown up by the Jain panel, within India and abroad.

"It would be in the interest of justice to issue the direction to the CBI for concluding this case within three months only," Dalal said in a letter to the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary Pulok Chatterjee earlier this week.
"There are serious shortcomings and lapses under which the CBI had functioned in the important assassination case of our former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi," he said.
In another letter to CBI Director Ranjit Sinha, Dalal urged him to get the MDMA reopen a case involving Rajiv Gandhi killing accused J Ranganathan and carry out extradition proceedings against top LTTE man Kumaran Padmanathan alias KP for their statements linking controversial godman Chandraswamy to the May 21, 1991 assassination.

While the Jain Commission had pointed towards the alleged involvement of the godman in the conspiracy which are being probed by the MDMA, both Ranganathan and KP had made separate statements a few years ago on the same lines.
The Jain Commission had submitted 22 volumes of its final report, while Justice J S Verma Commission, which had probed the security aspects of the killing, had submitted a two volume report. CBI's Special Investigation Team had given a 44-volume report which led to the Supreme Court judgment in the case in 1999.