2 in Southern India Accused of Having Sheltered Gandhi’s Killer, Accomplices

Two people have been arrested in India’s southern Tamil Nadu state and charged with having sheltered the assassin of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the United News of India reported Wednesday.

The news agency said that S. Bhagyanathan, 25, and his mother, Padma, were arrested Tuesday and that the assassin has now been identified as a woman called Thanu.

Gandhi was killed May 21 by a woman suicide bomber as he arrived at an election rally in the southern town of Sriperumbudur near Madras, capital of Tamil Nadu.

The two people arrested were ordered held in police custody for 30 days by the chief judicial magistrate of Chegalpattu district, which includes Sriperumbudur, UNI said.

Investigators issued a picture Tuesday night of a woman named Nalini they said was one of the people wanted in connection with Gandhi’s murder. UNI said Nalini is Bhagyanathan’s sister.

The magistrate’s interrogation revealed that the mother and son provided shelter to the assassin and three of her accomplices--Sivarajan and Das, both men, and a young woman named Subha, the news agency said.

Quoting an affidavit filed before the magistrate, UNI said the arrested people kept the assassin and her accomplices at a house in Villivakkam in Madras.

UNI said Sivarajan, alias Raja, has been identified as having been seen with the assassin at the Sriperumbudur rally.

Meanwhile, at least eight people were killed Wednesday in clashes among rival party supporters as India resumed the parliamentary elections suspended after Gandhi’s assassination.

The eight victims were killed in the northern state of Bihar, a hotbed of caste antagonism, while stray incidents of violence were reported from other states, they said.

Turnout in the second round of the elections was subdued by monsoon rains and the violence was on a much lower scale than during the first phase of voting May 20, when nearly 100 people were killed.

More than 100 million people--nearly one-fifth of the world’s biggest electorate--were eligible to vote Wednesday. Most of the rest are to vote Saturday.

Vote-counting starts Sunday and firm results are expected within two days.