Thirty-one years after they were arrested for their role, the remaining six convicts in the sensational Rajiv Gandhi assassination case walked free on Saturday after the Supreme Court ordered their release from prison.
While S Nalini, the longest serving woman prisoner in India, her husband Murugan, and Santhan walked out of the Central Prison in Vellore, Jayakumar and Robert Payas were released from the Puzhal Central Prison and Ravichandran from Madurai Central Prison.
Nalini and Ravichandran proceeded to their respective places of stay, while the four Sri Lankan nationals – Murugan, Santhan, Payas and Jayakumar – were being moved to the Transit Camp in Tiruchirapalli, 330 km from here. Since the four entered India without valid travel documents as refugees in the 1990s due to the war in Sri Lanka, they will be treated as “illegal immigrants”.
They will be lodged at the Trichy camp until the Union Government takes a call on whether to send them back to Sri Lanka or a country of their choice, sources told DH, adding that there is also a possibility of moving them to a location near Chennai very soon.
“All the six convicts have been released after following due procedure. They were set free after authorities received the Supreme Court order,” a senior government functionary told DH.
Television footage showed Nalini bidding a tearful adieu to her husband Murugan as he was taken in a police van to Tiruchirapalli from Vellore. Nalini, Perarivalan, and Ravichandran, were granted parole multiple times after 2017, but the other four continued to remain behind bars owing to their nationality.
The six persons and A G Perarivalan, who was released by the Supreme Court in May this year, were sentenced to death along with 19 others in 1998 by a special Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) court in Poonamallee. However, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence to Nalini, Perarivalan, Santhan, and Murugan, but commuted the sentence to life in jail for Ravichandran, Robert Payas, and Jayakumar and released 19 others.
The issue of seven convicts is a highly emotive one in Tamil Nadu with almost all political parties – barring Congress and BJP – endorsing the decision of the AIADMK government in 2018 to release them. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by LTTE suicide bomber at Sriperumbudur on May 21, 1991 before he was to address an election rally.
Nalini, daughter of a nurse and a policeman and who was living alone in Chennai, is accused of harbouring Dhanu, the suicide bomber who detonated the belt bomb killing Rajiv Gandhi, and Subha, the stand-by suicide bomber sent by LTTE.
Nalini got to know Murugan, a Sri Lankan national through her brother and fell in love with him. They got married and Nalini was pregnant when she was arrested and gave birth to a girl child in jail. While the remaining six were in the periphery of the crime, Nalini was the only convict to have been present at the public meeting where Rajiv Gandhi was killed.
However, she escaped along with one-eyed Sivarasan but was caught within a month, while Sivarasan and Subha died by suicide.
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