Chennai: Rajiv Gandhi, former Prime Minister, was assassinated by a human bomb at Sriperumbudur near Chennai when he was about to campaign for Maragatham Chandrasekar, the Congress candidate, on May 21, 1991. With him 15 persons including nine policemen perished and 43 suffered grievous or simple injuries.
Assassin Dhanu, an LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam) activist, who detonated the belt bomb concealed under her waist and Haribabu, a photographer engaged to take photographs of the horrific sight, also died in the blast.
The trial was conducted under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA), and the designated court awarded death sentence to all 26 accused named in
the case, on January 28, 1998.
The prolonged trial and judgement evoked outrage from legal and rights activists who complained that the process did not meet the standards of a free trial.
Since the case was tried under TADA, which now stands repealed, the convicts appealed to the Supreme Court.
In May 1999, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of four, including Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan and Nalini, commuted the death sentence of three to life, and freed the remaining 19. In April 2000, Nalini’s death penalty was commuted to one of life sentence by the Tamil Nadu Governor based on the recommmendation of the State cabinet and a public appeal by Rajiv’s wife Sonia Gandhi.
On February 18, 2014, the apex court commuted the death penalty for the remaining three convicts to life imprisonment, dismissing the government’s argument that the inordinate 11-year delay in deciding their clemency petitions cannot be a ground for the pardon.
The day after, the State government proposed to remit the sentence of life imprisonment awarded to them as well as four others convicted in the case.
The next day, the then UPA government knocked on the Apex Court’s doors against the Tamil Nadu government’s move.
On April 25, 2014, the Apex Court framed several legal questions for the consideration of the five-judge Bench. On Dec 2, 2015, the Apex Court ruled that the State had no provision to release the convicts tried under the Central law in cases that were probed by CBI.
Since then, the state had written twice to the Centre seeking its views on its decision to remit their sentence. The first one was written during UPA government’s tenure in February 2014.
The second was written on March 2, 2016, citing that the State was in receipt of fresh petitions from the convicts seeking to remit their sentence and release them, and the Centre rejected it a month later stating that the matter was sub-judice.
