All 26 people found guilty of assassinating the former Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, over six years ago have been sentenced to death by a special court in Madras.
Judge V. Navaneetham sentenced the assassins to death by hanging after finding they were part of a conspiracy led by the separatist Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka (LTTE). The defendants' lawyers said they would appeal against the sentence.
In his 2,000-page judgment, the judge also held the Tamil Tigers solely responsible for masterminding Mr Gandhi's murder by a female suicide bomber at an election rally at Sriperumbudur, 40 miles from the state capital of Madras, in May 1991.
The LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, and two senior aides were convicted in their absence. The Indian government has been seeking the extradition of the fugitives from Sri Lanka for over three years, but has made no headway. They have been waging war for an independent Tamil homeland against the Sri Lankan government since the mid-1980s.
Two of the 26 people who stood trial, including the man who built the bomb, were convicted of murder while the others who helped in various ways to execute the crime were found guilty of lesser charges such as aiding and abetting.
Meanwhile, officials from the Central Bureau of Investigation looking into the murder said the trial took such a long time because 12 of the 38 people arrested after the assassination committed suicide to conceal information, mostly by biting into cyanide capsules, a method widely preferred by Tamil Tiger activists.
Rajiv Gandhi and 17 other people died after Dhanu, a member of the Tigers' women suicide squad, garlanded the former prime minister at an election rally and simultaneously detonated a belt of plastic explosive tied around her waist and chest.
Investigating officials said the assassination had been meticulously rehearsed for nearly nine months.
The Tamil Tigers had vowed revenge against Rajiv Gandhi, holding him responsible for committing the Indian army to disarm their cadres in northern Sri Lanka, following a tenuous peace treaty which they say they were tricked into signing with the federal government in Colombo.
The Indian Peace-Keeping Force faced stiff resistance from well-armed and committed Tiger guerrillas, and was forced to withdraw without achieving its objective two years later. Reuters reports from Rohtak: Mr Gandhi's widow, Mrs Sonia Gandhi (51), said yesterday she was ready to step up involvement in her assassinated husband's Congress party.
She told an election rally in the northern town of Rohtak she had decided not to stand in the forthcoming parliamentary elections so that she could devote more time to the ailing party.
"For the time being I am not fighting from Amethi. I will be devoting the time to help the Congress party and strengthen it," she told a huge crowd of mainly farmers.
"But I want to make it clear that my interest in the party's affairs will not diminish," she told the cheering crowd.
Amethi, in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, was represented in parliament by her husband.
