For the Congress, the dead certainly seem to be expendable, at least in zealously safeguarding the image of another. In this case, former prime minister late P V Narashima Rao and former chief secretary of Madhya Pradesh late Bramhaswaroop are the expendables servicing former prime minister late Rajiv Gandhi's 'image' in public.

After the recent court verdict on the Bhopal gas tragedy, opposition hurled accusations of government complicity in Warren Anderson's escape - hinting strongly at Rajiv Gandhi's (the the prime minister) and Arjun Singh's (the the Madhya Pradesh chief minister) involvement.

The Congress, busy building up Rajiv's sparse charisma to be used as family legacy, panicked and had goaded Singh to speak up on the issue.

Finally, on Wednesday, Singh did sing - only to exonerate Rajiv and himself and find replacements for the targets of the opposition muck in P V Narashima Rao and Bramhaswarroop. He didn't name Rao but he might as well have, saying that repeated orders to assist Anderson came from the union home department - which he was informed of by his chief secretary. (Rao was the home minister then.)

This is quite convenient, given that both PVR and the chief secretary are dead. And as we all know, the dead don't speak - much less tattle.

Given that the party has more or less accepted a dynastic leadership for itself, it only would be a pragmatic thing to do to keep Rajiv's smiling cutouts inspire a 'faultless Rajiv' image in the country's collective associative memory. And we are not very far from precedents of such attempts by the Congress - the Q affair in the Bofors scam was buried hastily to whitewash Rajiv.

Infact, the Congress and the UPA government have proactively built  a larger-than-life image for Rajiv Gandhi. When it comes to naming anything from educational institutions to government welfare schemes to prominent urban landmarks, Rajiv's name is a top contender for the honours, along with Mahatma gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. So zealous is the Congress in its sycophancy that it has even credited Rajiv Gandhi with the 1991 economic reforms - sidelining PVR who many believe was brought the reforms alongwith his finance minister Manmohan Singh.

So, can we believe Arjun Singh, a guy whose forced retirement may have been ended by Congress's need to clear Rajiv's name, with his version of anderson's escape?