These include Nalini Sriharan and RP Ravichandran
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday, November 11 directed the premature release of six convicts, including Nalini Sriharan and RP Ravichandran, serving sentences for life life, in the assassination case of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, a PTI report in The Tribune, Chandigarh, says.
Nalini, Ravichandran, Santhan, Murugan, Perarivalan, Robert Payas and Jayakumar were sentenced to life terms in the case.
Nalini and Ravichandran had moved the top court seeking their premature release. Both had challenged a June 17 order of the Madras High Court, which had rejected their pleas for early release.
The bench said “In so far as the applicants before us are concerned, their death sentences were commuted to life on account of delay…We direct that all the appellants are deemed to have served their sentence…The applicants are thus directed to be released unless required in any other case,”.
A bench of Justices BR Gavai and BV Nagarathna said the judgment of the top court in the case of AG Perarivalan, one of the convicts in the case, is equally applicable in their matter.
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Invoking its extraordinary power under Article 142 of the Constitution, the top court had on May 18 ordered the release of Perarivalan, who had served over 30 years in jail.
Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on the night of May 21, 1991 at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu by a woman suicide bomber, identified as Dhanu, at a poll rally.
In its May 1999 order, the top court had upheld the death sentence of four convicts Perarivalan, Murugan, Santhan and Sriharan.
However in 2014, it commuted the death sentence of Perarivalan to life imprisonment along with those of Santhan and Murugan on grounds of delay in deciding their mercy petitions. Nalini’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2001 on the consideration that she has a daughter.
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