India’s Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said the killing of his father Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 brought him tremendous pain but he nursed no anger or hatred towards those responsible for it.

“I don’t have anger or hatred towards anybody. Of course, I lost my father and for me it was a very difficult time,” Rahul Gandhi was quoted by news agency PTI as saying. He further said it was similar to having one’s heart severed.

Rahul Gandhi said this while replying to a question posed by a student at a state-run women’s college in Puducherry on Wednesday.

During an interaction, a student asked Rahul Gandhi, “Your father was killed by the LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam]. What are your feelings about these people?”

“I felt tremendous pain, but I don’t feel anger, I don’t feel any hatred or any anger. I forgive,” Rahul Gandhi said to rounds of applause.

To the next question related to his political innings despite losing his father and grandmother, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi said, “Violence cannot take away anything from you... my father is alive in me...my father is talking through me.”

RAJIV GANDHI’S ASSASSINATION

Rajiv Gandhi was killed on May 21, 1991 by a woman suicide bomber at Sriperumbudur near Chennai in a poll rally.

The LTTE was defeated in the 2009 civil war in Sri Lanka.

Though most parties supported the release of seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) had opposed it.

TNCC chief KS Alagiri had said a few months ago that if the Rajiv case convicts were to be set free, a demand would arise for the release of all “murder convicts” who had spent over 25 years in prison.

“If the court announces the release of seven Rajiv case convicts, we will accept it. However, political parties rooting for their release is unacceptable,” Alagiri had said.

The Tamil Nadu government had in 2018 recommended to Governor Banwarilal Purohit to release them and the ruling AIADMK and main opposition DMK, both of whom strongly support freeing them, have had verbal duel over the matter.

-Agencies