A delegation of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) visited Berlin recently to seek banking details of LTTE financier Kumaran Padmanathan or “KP,”, to unravel the conspiracy behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the Hindu reported yesterday.

During the talks between CBI Director Vijay Shanker and German Federal agency Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) chief Jorg Ziercke, they said the CBI took up the matter of financial transactions of Padmanathan who was alleged to be a major gun-runner for the LTTE.

“The Indian delegation stressed execution of Letters Rogatory (LR) which were pending with the German authorities for long. The LRs were issued by Multi Disciplinary Monitoring Agency to various countries, including Germany. But the main impediment for the CBI was that several countries, including Germany, Australia, Switzerland and the Netherlands, demanded an undertaking that the death penalty would not be imposed or carried out against any such person whose details were sought in the Rajiv Gandhi case,” the Hindu added.

Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by an LTTE female suicide cadre in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu in 1991.