A SABOTAGE PLAN

Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in Madras on 21 May 1991. The killers were the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from Sri Lanka. Their planning was so thorough that it seemed they would never be caught. Yet on 20 August 1991, police traced the mastermind, 23-year-old Sivarasan, to a house near Bangalore. Seeing the heavy police presence, Sivarasan and his associates swallowed cyanide and killed themselves.

The reason Sivarasan was caught lay in one “mistake.” On 21 May, when he arrived at the rally venue with his team, he had disguised himself as a press reporter. To make the disguise look real, he had brought along a local photographer, Hari Babu.

Hari Babu was only a hired hand and was kept unaware of the real plan. He took several pictures of Rajiv Gandhi from different angles. In one of them, Sivarasan’s face was also captured. When the bomb exploded, killing Rajiv Gandhi, Hari Babu too was among those killed. Sivarasan escaped, but his photographer’s camera fell into police hands. From it, they got Sivarasan’s photo, printed it in newspapers, and announced a reward of one million rupees for anyone providing information. A milk seller near Bangalore, who used to deliver milk to Sivarasan daily, recognized him from the photo. Acting on her tip, police raided the house on the outskirts of Bangalore (The Times of India, 21 August 1991).

A destructive event depends on many factors to succeed. Due to human limitations, it’s impossible to control all of them. Every destructive plan has a flaw, and it is this flaw that leads to the scheme’s failure.