By Devirupa Mitra, IANS
New Delhi : The killing of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto – whose family is compared with the Kennedys in triumph and tragedy — highlights the bloody saga of assassinations in South Asia since the end of British rule six decades ago.
It began with the fatal shooting of Mahatma Gandhi at a prayer meeting in the very heart of the Indian capital, less than a year after he led the country to independence. The lone killer was Nathuram Godse, who shot him from close range at Birla House on the morning of Jan 31, 1948.
Three years later, Pakistan’s first prime minister, Liaqat Ali Khan, was shot twice in the chest while attending a public meeting in Rawalpindi – the same city where Bhutto was killed — on Oct 16, 1951. He was posthumously honoured with the title “Shaheed-e-Millat” or “Martyr of the Nation”.
The Indian Ocean island nation of Sri Lanka, now in the grip of a terrible ethnic conflict, witnessed its first major political assassination when a Buddhist monk shot dead President S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike on Sep 26, 1959 in Colombo.
Three decades later, Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa was killed when a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber strapped with explosives blew up at a May Day rally in 1993, also in Colombo.
Sri Lankan presidential candidate and opposition leader Gamini Dissanayake was killed in a similar suicide attack in 1994, also blamed on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Five years later, President Chandrika Kumaratunga miraculously survived a near similar LTTE attack but lost vision in one eye.
Bangladesh, founded in 1971 after a bloody struggle against the Pakistani military, saw disgruntled army personnel storm the Dhaka residence of the country’s founder leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on Aug 15, 1975 and shoot him and most of his family dead.
President Zia ur Rahman, who took power soon after Mujibur Rahman’s death, was also killed by army officers in the port town of Chittagong May 29, 1981.
In Pakistan, Zulifkar Ali Bhutto, Benazir’s father, was hanged to death April 4, 1979 on the orders of President Zia-ul-haq, who had overthrown him in a coup two years earlier.
As fate would have it, on Aug 17, 1988, Zia died in a plane crash whose cause remains a mystery.
Nearly four decades after Mahatma Gandhi’s killing, political assassinations returned to India with a vengeance.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi died a horrible death when two of her Sikh bodyguards opened fire at her from close range at her official residence in New Delhi Oct 30, 1984.
And her son and successor Rajiv Gandhi died when a LTTE woman suicide bomber blew up at an election rally he was about to address near Chennai May 21, 1991.
Nepal’s King Birendra, his wife and several family members were killed June 1, 2001 when Crown Prince Dipendra opened fire at them during a family get-together before killing himself.