Calling the book an enlightening guide on how the system can be manipulated, former BJP leader KN Govindacharya said national security was hurt by manipulation.
Speaking at the release of 'Assasination of Rajiv Gandhi: An Inside Job?' the former swayamsevak added that the author Faraz Ahmad had given a sociological context to the murder and had identified the beneficiaries of former PM Gandhi's demise. "Like Mahatma Gandhi, Netaji Bose, Jayaprakash Narayan and Deendayal Upadhyaya, questions still remain over the assassination of Rajiv. The common man still wants an answer," he said.
Senior journalist Vinod Mehta, who released the book, said that he welcomed the trend of reporters writing books. "It is a good trend as there is an excess of books by editors who pontificate and preach... Faraz has followed leads that commissions of inquiry deliberately did not follow," he said.
Mr. Mehta cautioned the publisher Renu Kaul Verma against releasing too many excerpts. "Nowadays you can read five different newspapers and get a quarter of the book. Then why would anyone buy it," he joked.
"I had my suspicions (over the assassination) from Day One, but I neither had the courage nor the wherewithal to write a book... There was a deliberate and conscious effort at covering up the assassination and hardly any effort to expose the real perpetrators," said Mr. Ahmad.
He added that although he could not name the alleged perpetrators, for fear of legal action, readers would get a clear idea of who they were.
"This was a contract job that had nothing to do with the ideology or the larger cause of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (accused of the crime)," he claimed.
