26 Found Guilty, Ordered Hanged for Gandhi Slaying

POONAMALLEE, India — A mammoth conspiracy trial ended with convictions Wednesday for all 26 people tried in the 1991 suicide bombing that killed former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the political heir of India’s Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. All 26 were ordered hanged.

“The nation stands vindicated,” declared D.R. Karthikeyan, the federal police officer who led the investigation.

Gandhi, the son and grandson of Indian Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, respectively, was campaigning for his Congress (I) Party in southern India on May 21, 1991, when a woman detonated plastic explosives strapped to her body.

The case--which finally went to trial more than four years ago--was India’s longest assassination trial. The convicted, half of them Sri Lankan Tamils and the rest Indians, will appeal Wednesday’s verdict to India’s Supreme Court.