JFK’S ASSASSINATION AND HOW IT AFFECTED COVERAGE IN INDIA

It would be 58 years on Monday (22 November) since America’s first Roman Catholic President John Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas by sharpshooters allegedly linked to the Mafia and a specially created Delta Force. The murder mystery remains unresolved though it was officially claimed that JFK was shot by a pro-leftist assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was also the lone gunman involved in the shooting. However, this was contrary to the claims of many eyewitnesses who maintained that the first shots towards the President came from behind a picket fence in front of the motorcade and not from the top of the building where Oswald was supposed to be waiting for the appropriate moment. The hypothesis of the bullets being fired from the front was also supported by the preliminary forensic evidence which showed pieces of Kennedy’s brain on the back of the car with his wife Jackie attempting to assist her husband. Incidentally, Oswald was killed in less than 24 hours by a Night Club owner and a Mafia informant Jack Ruby. There have been multiple conspiracy theories that have done the rounds and it is not merely a coincidence that more than 350 people who were part of the investigation, died over the years under unexplained circumstances. A theory expounded by some experts was that the President became a victim of a combined operation of Mafia with some sharpshooters who had been recruited to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba. The existence of such a force was known to a select few persons including the earlier President Dwight Eisenhower and his Vice President, Richard Nixon, who had contested against JFK in the 1960 polls. The controversial FBI director John Edgar Hoover was also aware of such a force. The Mafia was extremely upset with Kennedy, whose younger brother, Robert, the Attorney General had in his possession a list of all the Mafia members whom he wanted to be brought to book. Robert was also later killed in Los Angeles in 1968 under equally mysterious conditions. Even in that case, the official version was not convincing enough for many veteran police officers, who had dealt in the past with crime and the Mafia. In India, the news of JFK’s tragic assassination came late at night. Most newspapers were ready to go to bed and the process of printing was about to commence or was in progress. The main lead of every daily in the country was the helicopter crash in Kashmir in which five top officers, all above the rank of Major General were killed. Among them were Lt.General Daulat Singh, Lt.General Bikram Singh, Air Vice Marshal Pinto. It was widely believed that at least two of them would have risen to become the Chiefs of the Army and Airforce. The moment the news of Kennedy’s assassination flashed on the tickers, there was a stunned silence in newsrooms. Veteran journalists often related this to young reporters that the Kennedy story superseded every other report of the day and even the death of the senior defence officers was pushed to the bottom of the paper thus demonstrating how news is the most perishable commodity. In one particular newspaper where 30,000 copies had already been printed, the Chief Sub Editor took the bold decision of stopping the press and trashing the printed copies to make a fresh page with JFK gunning down as the banner headline. This golden rule in most newsrooms still exists and any news considered to be sacrosanct till a point can find its relevance diminishing if something more important comes up. This is a fact that is universal and continues to be most sacrosanct.