Rajiv assassins row: Karunanidhi is a hypocrite, says SIT chief Raghothaman

The chief investigating officer of the Special Investigation Team which probed the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case blasted various organizations in Tamil Nadu for distorting the facts associated with the death sentence awarded to Santhan, Murugand and Perarivalan, the three LTTE assassins.

"I saw Karunanidhi appealing to the state and central governments on Monday to commute the death sentences of the three LTTE activists to life imprisonment. He knows very well that it is illegal and impossible. That's why he himself shied away from doing that in 2000 when he was the chief minister. Now what Karunanidhi is doing is nothing but hypocrisy," said K Raghothaman, the ace sleuth who was drafted by the Central Bureau of Investigation as a member of the SIT when it was set up in 1991.

Speaking to DNA, Raghothaman, who retired from the CBI in 2005, said even the commutation of death sentence of Nalini to life imprisonment by the then Governor of Tamil Nadu smacked of mysteries.

He said it was because of the pressure exerted by the then chief minister Karunanidhi that this happened. "Even then Karunanidhi played it safe by refusing to entertain the pleas of the others because he knew it was impossible," said Raghothaman.