How Shinzo Abe assassination has become a domestic political issue in India

THE brutal assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe during a campaign rally in Nara in Japan on Friday (8) has left the entire world in a state of shock. In India, too, the murder saw reactions coming from prime minister Narendra Modi and a number of opposition leaders and the country decided to observe national mourning on Saturday (9). Abe was shot twice and the doctors could not revive him despite trying for several hours.

However, one opposition party -- the Trinamool Congress (TMC) -- decided to make Abe's death a domestic political issue. In the front page of its mouthpiece 'Jago Bangla' (Wake Up Bengal), the party published a story in which it said the Japanese leader was shot by a former defence personnel of the east Asian nation who was not getting pension.

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The TMC was clearly drawing a line between the death of Abe and the ongoing row in India over the 'Agnipath' scheme of recruitment in the Indian armed forces which saw massive violence and destruction of property last month.

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Abe's assassin, identified as Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, was immediately arrested. The police said he had served in Japan's Maritime Self Defence Forces or the Japanese Navy for three years.

The TMC, which is a vocal critic of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), compared the Japanese Navy with India's Agnipath scheme, alleging the Modi government intends to employ youth in the defence forces for a short tenure and release them four years later without offering pension and other retirement benefits.

Yamagami reportedly lost his job after serving for three years and was not getting any job or pension.

On Friday, Surendra Rajput of the opposition Indian National Congress also drew a comparison between the motive of Abe's killer and the controversial 'Agnipath' scheme.

"Yamagami, who shot Shinzo Abe, had worked in Japan’s SDF i.e. Army without pension," he tweeted. 

The Japanese Self-Defence Forces are the country's military forces that include Japan Ground Self-Defence Force, Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force, and Japan Air Self-Defence Force.

While personnel in the Japanese defence forces get a one-time payment after their retirement, they have no regular pension scheme.

Cops in Japan said while Yamagami admitted to attacking the former prime minister, he told the investigators that he made the sinister plot as he believed rumours about Abe having connection to a certain organisation that the police did not identify. The assassin reportedly said that his grudge against Abe was not related to politics.