Officer injured in fatal attack on Rajiv Gandhi gets blood-stained cap back on last day at work

WHILE A VERDICT IN THE CASE WAS PRONOUNCED IN 1998, THE COURT SAID MATERIAL OBJECTS MAY BE REQUIRED IN THE PROBE INTO THE CONSPIRACY

CHENNAI: On Thursday, Prateep Philip retired as Director General of Police (Training) wearing a blood-stained cap and the same name badge he was wearing 30 years ago when, as an Assistant Superintendent of Police, he was on duty at the Sriperumbudur election meeting where a suicide bomber killed former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Two days before his retirement, a Chennai court allowed him to retrieve the cap and badge, submitted as material evidence in the case.

“It was a defining and refining moment for me,” says Philip, who was only a few feet ahead of Gandhi when a woman suicide bomber detonated a powerful bomb. Philip, who still carries around 100 small pieces of shrapnel in his body wanted to sign off wearing the cap and badge, both so-called material objects in legal terms. The cap was marked as M.O.38 and the name badge as M.O.39. An additional sessions court judge, T Chandrasekaran ordered on September 28 that the petitioner Philip could take interim custody of his cap and badge. Both are to be returned to the court in a month. Though the judgment in the case was pronounced in 1998 and the convicts and the respondents have exhausted all their appeals, the court said that there is a likelihood that the material objects may be required by the MultiDisciplinary Monitoring Agency under the CBI, which is still probing a larger conspiracy behind the assassination.

Understanding Philip’s sentimental attachment to his cap and badge, a team of lawyers led by Sanjay Pinto made an emotional argument to the court.

“This is his last professional wish,” said Sanjay Pinto. “He almost died in the blast. He was in the line of duty. I said (in the court) that the cap and the badge symbolise blood, sweat and tears.”