The Tamil Nadu Government’s decision to write to Governor Banwarilal Purohit asking him to release the seven assassins of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who are serving life term in a Chennai jail has not gone down well with the families of persons who perished or seriously injured in the May 21, 1991 bomb blast perpetrated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) terrorists.
The Edappadi Palaniswamy Government had written to the Governor last Sunday asking him to release Nalini, Suthendraraja (Santhan), Sreeharan (Murugan, who is also the husband of Nalini), A G Perarivalan (Arivu), Robert Payas, S Jayakumar, and Ravichandran, the seven assassins accused of providing logistic and other help to the LTTE executioners Sivarajan, Dhanu and Suba.
Dhanu was the human bomb who herself got blew up during the assassination while Sivarasan and Suba committed suicide to escape from the Indian Army commandoes who were deputed to catch them from their hide out in Bangalore.
Perarivalan had approached the apex court with a plea that though he had submitted a mercy petition to the Governor in 2015 seeking remission from the life term the latter had not taken any decision. The apex court had on September 6 asked the Governor to consider the mercy petition of Perarivalan though it has not directed him to set the assassin free.
Political parties in Tamil Nadu barring the BJP and the Congress welcomed the Supreme Court directive which led to the State Cabinet writing to the Governor invoking Article 161 of the Constitution.
All the accused were sentenced to death by the trial court which was upheld by the High Court as well as the Supreme Court. But the death sentences were commuted to life sentences following the clemency petitions filed by the assassins. It was Sonia Gandhi who gave clemency to Nalini.
Legal experts state that the advice by the Council of Ministers is binding on the Governor. But no time limit has been prescribed in the Constitution.
The Governor can also seek the opinion of the Centre with regard to the Tamil Nadu Government’s advice.
The Congress in Tamil Nadu is of the view that the assassins had been given clemency in the past and they were saved from the gallows. “But the demand to release them from prison is unreasonable and unjustifiable,” said Vijayadharini, Congress MLA whose mother Bagavathy Padmanabhan suffered serious injuries in the May 21, 1991 blast at Sriperumbudur which killed Gandhi.
While the Dravidian fringe groups and pro-LTTE elements have gone gung-ho over the Supreme Court directive, the general public are reluctant to come out against the move lest they earn the wrath of extremist groups. “What should the nation think of a wife and two children who forgive killers who join with anti Indian foreign terrorist organisation to brutally blow up Rajiv Gandhi and kill him in cold blood merely for following national interests as Prime Minister?,” asked Subramanian Swamy, MP.
There is a fear among the people in the State that the same modus operandi could be deployed in future to set free Sasikala, Ilavarasi, and Sudhakaran serving imprisonment in the disproportionate asset case. “Many Islamist organisations have asked the Government to release convicts in murder cases who have completed 20 years of sentence. This is not a good precedence,” said a legal expert who did not want his name to be quoted. He said that action of the AIADMK in writing to the governor was with an eye on the vote bank.