JOIN US44-year-old Nalini, whose plea for early release has been rejected by the Tamil Nadu government, had kept the mobile in a cloth bag. It was detected during routine checks in the jail. Two SIM cards were also found in Nalini's cell. Jail inmates are barred from keeping mobiles.
"When the jail authorities tried to recover the mobile phone from the bag, Nalini snatched it and threw it into a nearby toilet. However, an official acted quickly and recovered the phone from the toilet. The instrument has now been sent for proper analysis and we can make any conclusion only after getting the details of call records", Law Minister Duraimurugan told the state assembly.
Whether Nalini made calls to foreign countries or not can be ascertained only after the analysis, he said. He said it was the first case of mobile phone being recovered from an inmate of the Vellore special prison for women.
Nalini had recently appealed in the Madras High Court seeking premature release which the court declined on a reccommendation from the state government which cited different grounds including gravity of the crime. Nalini had sought the relief on the ground that she had spent 19 years in prison and her conduct throughout this period was good. She had also stated that her husband, Murugan, was also in jail and she had to look after her daughter.
A Division bench of the Madras High court had rejected her petition observing that she had committed the crime in a cunning and meticulous manner. Nalini had accompanied the squad that assassinated Rajiv Gandhi in Sriperumbudur on May 21, 1991. She was given death sentence but it was commuted to life imprisonment after Sonia Gandhi recommended to the President to reduce the sentence considering the plight of Nalini's daughter.