It was a hot and humid day, 21 May 1991, and Tamil Nadu was gripped by election fever. Gandhi was campaigning in the state. The indications were that he was riding back to power after being in the wilderness for almost three years. He was wading into the crowd late in the evening in Sriperumbudur, 40 kilometres from Madras (now called Chennai), when a bespectacled young girl, Thenmozhi Rajaratnam alias Dhanu alias Gayatri, dressed in a yellow salwar suit and a green shawl, stepped forward to touch his feet reverently. As she bent down, Dhanu pressed the trigger of a bomb fitted in her belt
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