After Neena Gopal’s The Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and several other by the investigators D.R. Kaarthikeyan, Ragothamman and others, another book on the former prime minister’s assassination is all set to be launched on November 24, in Chennai. The country’s longest serving woman prisoner Nalini Sriharan’s autobiography in Tamil talks about her childhood, her love, some unknown facts in Rajiv's killing, her life in jail and, of course, her meeting with Priyanka Gandhi and what Rajiv’s daughter wanted to know.
“It has two full chapters on Priyanka’s secret meeting with her in Vellore prison,” says Nalini's lawyer Pugazhendhi.
Nalini refers to this meeting as the tensest moment as Priyanka insisted to know why her father—“a good man”—was killed, who killed him and the conspiracy behind the murder. But Nalini only said that she did not know about the conspiracy,” says Pugazhendhi.
Unlike other books which talked about Rajiv's last moments or the investigation and how the conspiracy unfolded, Nalini’s book, says Pugazhendhi, tells the accounts of torture in Malligai, by the police officers, where the interrogation was carried out then.
Also, it talks about how her mother Padmavathi, who served as a nurse in a private hospital then, was named by none other than Gandhi himself. Nalini, says Pugazhendhi, also writes about her first meeting with Murugan, who is also in the Vellore prison, convicted in the Rajiv assassination case, her love life, the coming of Dhanu, Sivarasan, and the circumstances that made her part of their team.
Authored in Tamil and published by Yazh publications, the 600-pager will have forwards from leading politicians in Tamil Nadu, from MDMK’s Vaiko to VCK’s Thol Thirumvalavan.
The book is all set to be launched on November 24, in Chennai.
