SC directs Centre to take a call on release of convicts within 3 months on Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination

NewsBharati    24-Jan-2018
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New Delhi, January 24: Seeking a probe into Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, Supreme Court is going to hear plea filed by A. G. Perarivalan, one of the convicts. Centre directed to reveal the status of seven convicts in the assassination. Also, SC asked the centre on a plea which was filed on 2016. 

A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi, A M Sapre and Navin Sinha asked Centre to take a call on the plea of the Tamil Nadu government within three months.

The seven men convicted in the assassination of the former Prime Minister – Murugan, Perarivalan, Nalini, Santhan, Robert Payas, Jayakumar, and Ravichandran – were sentenced to death, along with 21 others, by a special court under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) in an order dated 28 January 1998.

The letter was written by A. G. Perarivalan on 2nd March, 2016 seeking Centre’s nod to release the convicts. He was arrested on June 11, 1991, from Periyar Thidal, Chennai by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officers. He was earlier given death penalty, was finally commuted to life term imprisonment after the Supreme Court's verdict on February 18, 2014.

Meanwhile, our former Prime Minister 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 an election rally. Fourteen others, including Dhanu herself, were also killed.