The episode at Rajghat on Gandhiji’s birth anniversary underlines the utter incompetence of the security arrangements for the President and the Prime Minister. That an armed man could have managed to get into the Rajghat complex on the eve of the anniversary celebrations and spend the night there speaks for itself. It shows that the so-called inspection of sites the President or the Prime Minister is to visit the next day is so much waste of time and effort. The security men knew days in advance that not only Giani Zail Singh and Mr. Rajiv Gandhi but also many other VIPs would participate in the Rajghat function on October 2. It follows that they must have combed the place on the previous evening and night. Yet they failed to detect the man who had managed to hide himself in the bushes in the complex. Mercifully the security failure has not ended in a tragedy. But no thanks are due to the security men for it. They have been found wanting in this case as in many others, the latest being General Vaidya’s assassination in Pune. There will certainly be an inquiry into the lapse. No one need recommend it. But the result could well be more elaborate security arrangements for the President and the Prime Minister which will not necessarily be more efficient. Indeed, these could well be even less efficient. Quantity does not get converted into quality in such matters.
While the incompetence and failure of the security arrangements are obvious enough, it will be wrong to rush to conclusions regarding the man who has been arrested and his motive. The nation must await the completion of the police investigations and an official statement on the subject. Meanwhile certain points can be made even if tentatively. The arrested person does not appear to belong to a terrorist organization; if he did, he would not have been armed with a country-made gun with just a few cartridges. A terrorist organization would certainly have provided him with a proper weapon if it was to expect him to make a worthwhile attempt on the life of the President and/or the Prime Minister. While it is not possible for us to say with certainty that he fired the two shots which were “heard” at Rajghat at about 7 a.m., that is before the beginning of the prayers there, it does seem that he did so. If that is indeed the case, that is, if there was no second person who could have fired the two shots, the arrested man could well be a crank. A trained terrorist would have waited for the prayers to start and everyone’s attention to be focussed on them. He acted as if he wanted to warn the security men about his presence in the complex. We are not sure whether they paid any attention to the shots; for the accounts vary. If the shots did not alert them, then the government might as well pack them off. But even if they heeded the shots, as they have claimed, they were not able to determine the direction from which they came and look for the man in hiding. That he was able to fire another shot an hour later when the Prime Minister was about to leave Rajghat is a crying testimony to their lack of the necessary alertness. Indeed, this would suggest that, like many others not versed in such matters, the security men too regarded the shots as backfirings by a scooter. Such a conclusion would be beyond comment in view of the distance between the road and the prayer ground at the samadhi. Our comment is based on deductive reasoning; we do not know and do not claim to know the facts. We only hope Mr. Rajiv Gandhi will be able to get at them. Fortunately for us, unlike in the case of Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the culprit has not been disposed of in this case.
To say that the man could be a crank is not to dismiss the possibility that he wanted to kill the President or/and the Prime Minister. Cranks can be dangerous. President Reagan was shot at and injured by a mentally disturbed person who had no good reason to bear him any grudge. The culprit is also not without some guile. He wore olive green clothes and had wrapped himself in a green blanket so that he could get lost in the bushes. This speaks of some planning and therefore of some purpose. But what purpose? The available facts do not permit even intelligent speculation. The whole episode just does not add up. It is all too confusing. Perhaps the intelligence men interrogating the culprit have got at the truth. Only they should be more careful than the security men have been. They should be truly thorough before they claim that they have worked out everything.