As Sonia Gandhi’s world came crashing down on May 21, 1991, when Rajiv Gandhi was killed in an explosion, the eerie premonition made by her son Rahul echoed in her mind.
A woman on the pretense of offering him a garland detonated the explosives strapped to her body, killing the former prime minister and 14 others in his vicinity.
Sonia Gandhi recalls the fateful evening when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, in her memoir “Belonging: A Journey of Love”.
“No such review was ever undertaken. The very next month the SPG cover was withdrawn by the VP Singh government. A specialised force in a whole system trained to provide proximate security was replaced with the local police,” Gandhi writes. “I crumpled in my daughter’s arms. ‘I should have gone with him,’ I cried out, again and again. ‘Why didn’t I go with him? Disbelieving, clinging to hope, I dialled Mr. George myself. ‘Just tell me, is it true? His voice faltered. ‘Yes it is true, Sahab is no more. I felt as if my world had gone dark, and that darkness had swallowed me whole.”
The final attempt on Rajiv’s life came a little over a year after his SPG cover was withdrawn by the VP Singh government, even though a committee met in December and decided that the Special Protection Group cover must continue “unless a change was warranted by some fresh threat assessment”, Gandhi writes. She said nothing.
“Rajiv’s beloved daughter was broken but composed. Priyanka hadn’t cried in front of me, not once. She took charge of everything, darting between her room and Rahul’s. From there she could shield her mother from hearing anything that might add to her agony. She was making phone calls, arguing with some-one: ‘Let us go on the plane that’s bringing him back. Please.
If you don’t allow us, we’ll make our own arrangements,” she said forcefully. “But we will go’,” Gandhi recalls.
