Fourteen years after he was blown up by a suicide bomber, a government body is still trying to find out if there was a conspiracy behind the killing of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

And the Congress-led government has just given the Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA) another extension to get to the truth. But officials in the home ministry say the MDMA, which was set up in 1998, had failed to make any major breakthrough to unravel the "real conspiracy" behind Gandhi's grotesque assassination blamed on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

One official even went to the extent of saying that the MDMA appeared on "some fishing expedition". But, ironically, it got another lease of life last month after Home Minister Shivraj Patil reviewed its work.

The MDMA came up on the recommendation of judge Milap Chand Jain, whose own inquiry into the conspiracy theory was called to an end after it ended up destabilising a centre-left government in New Delhi in 1998.

Jain wanted the MDMA to look into pointers he could not possibly investigate.

Some of the leads to be chased included controversial guru Chandraswami's links with the now defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), where a senior LTTE operative known as Kumaran Padmanabhan alias KP operated accounts.

Also to be probed were Chandraswami's alleged connections with major intelligence agencies such as Israel's Mossad and the US CIA.

"We have sent out letters rogatory (legal letters of request for help) to 23 countries where KP is believed to have established his network through investments in different business enterprises but we have not got the assistance we were looking for," a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) official told IANS.

Only five countries have responded to the letters rogatory while four - the Bahamas, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Greece - refused to respond.

Sri Lankan officials, however, wholeheartedly extended cooperation to the CBI's Special Investigation Team that probed Gandhi's May 1991 killing near Chennai.

Four other countries - Australia, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany - have sought an assurance from India that evidence they furnish would not be used for handing out death sentence to anyone.

Also on the MDMA's scanner is a Khalistani terrorist group accused of being involved in the assassination.

This was borne out by the interrogation of Mahant Sewa Das, a peripheral Akali politician who told the Jain Commission that a US-based Sikh separatist had allegedly told him of a plot to assassinate Gandhi.

"Apparently, some LTTE members were present in (that leader's) house but there is no evidence to suggest that," said a CBI source.

Similarly, DMK chief M. Karunanidhi's tacit support to the LTTE during an earlier era was also a subject matter for further investigation by the MDMA.

Though some officials cite non-cooperation from foreign countries as a reason for the MDMA taking such an inordinate time to finish its probe, the body, say other officials, has been simply unable to move ahead.

When it was constituted, the MDMA comprised senior officials from the Intelligence Bureau, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and banking experts. Now it has been reduced to a skeleton staff.