'Priyanka and I were unhappy when LTTE chief Prabhakaran was killed,' says Rahul Gandhi

Congress president, Rahul Gandhi shocked people when he said that he and his sister, Priyanka Gandhi were unhappy when their father, Rajiv Gandhi's killer, Prabhakaran was eliminated. While addressing the crowd at Bucerius Summer School, he said that the LTTE chief's killing might have negatively impacted his children which is why they regret the killing of their father's assassin.

He said, “My grandmother (Indira Gandhi) and my father (Rajiv Gandhi) were both killed. So, I have suffered violence. I am talking actually from experience. The only way you can move forward after violence is forgiveness. There is no other way. And to forgive, you have to understand what exactly happened and why it happened.” 

 “To deal with it is to actually listen and act non-violently. People think this is a weakness. But, in fact, this is strength. My father was killed by a terrorist in 1991. In 2009, I saw the person who killed my father lying in a field in Sri Lanka," Rahul further added. 

Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber, who was allegedly a member of the  LTTE, at an election rally in Tamil Nadu on May 21, 1991.

Here are a few more excerpts from his speech: 
“I called up my sister Priyanka and said that this is very strange, but I am not happy. I should be celebrating that the person who is dead is the person who killed my father. But somehow I am not happy. She said, ‘you are right, I am not happy either’.”

“The reason I wasn’t happy was that I saw myself in his children. So, I realised, him lying there actually means that there are kids like me who are crying,” he said.

“He might have been a bad or an evil person, but the violence that was done against him was impacting others, like it had impacted me. If you go deep, you will find there is something that triggered that violence. It’s not just a random event. Some action or violence done against him or her has triggered it".