Sonia, Narasimha Rao had strained relations: Union minister K V Thomas

Thomas says it could not be construed in a simplistic way as a statement against the slow pace of the process of meting out justice.

"When Congress was in power, a broadside from Sonia was indeed a censure of Narasimha Rao," he writes.

Sonia believed so long as Rao remained in power, the probe into Rajiv's death will reach nowhere, says Thomas in the book.

"Her conviction was some other agency might have masterminded the murder and engineered it through LTTE. It was circumstances which pushed Sonia into politics. How could she remain witness when the edifices of the party was crumbling," he says.

Writing in a Delhi daily last week, Natwar Singh recalls from his dairy noting of May 13, 1995 when Rao called him to his Race Course Residence in the night.