Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which produced three prime ministers, laments that he has not yet got justice even 17 years after the assassination of his father Rajiv Gandhi. At a discussion with a group of university students in Srinagar, Rahul has, in what The Times of India calls 'an apparent reference to the non-execution of death sentence awarded to those convicted in the assassination of the former prime minister', blamed the slow pace of India's legal system.

Rahul's lament amounts to a damning indictment of India, which has not only failed to bring the main suspects in the Rajiv assassination, Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman, to justice but is also mollycoddling the satanic forces which have risen in their defence in Tamil Nadu. Those who are on death row in India over the Rajiv assassination are only fries and it is not they but the terror masterminds who really deserve to be sent to the gallows. But, is Rahul's Congress Party, of which his late Prime Minister father was a leader, doing enough to have justice done?

Like Rahul's father, thousands of other parents have been killed at the behest of Prabhakaran, who has been sentenced to 200 years RI for bombing the Central Bank of Sri Lanka in 1996; 55 persons were killed and over 1,500 injured in that dastardly terror strike. His death squads have also butchered thousands of other civilians including infants and pregnant mothers. If Prabhakaran were to be tried separately for all those crimes, he would have to be sentenced to at least 2,500 years RI. But, he and his confederates are at large disporting themselves in more and more bloodletting.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has offered to extradite Prabhakaran to India over the Rajiv killing, if he is captured alive. Rahul Gandhi's Congress Party which has tremendous influence over and is currently at the helm of the official and political India is in a position to have the killers of Rajiv brought to justice. But, that party is doing precious little, while the DMK and the lunatic fringe in Tamil Nadu are all out to rescue the real killers of Rajiv, trapped in the Vanni. Jayalalitha's AIADMK is in the forefront of a political battle to defeat the LTTE allies' attempt to take Prabhakaran off the hook on some flimsy pretext but Rahul's Congress has taken a back seat.

It behoves Rahul to be unequivocal and more active in calling for capturing and punishing his father's killers. He, as the General Secretary of the main constituent party of a coalition ruling the world's largest democracy, should speak not only for himself and his family but also for the thousands of those who have lost their dear and near ones at the hands of the LTTE.