Madras High Court dismisses Nalini’s plea for release

CHENNAI - The Madras High Court Tuesday dismissed an appeal for premature release by Nalini Sriharan, serving a life sentence for the 1991 assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Agreeing with the submission of the Tamil Nadu government, a bench of Justice Elipe Dharma Rao and Justice K.K.Sashidharan said that in a case investigated and filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the state government cannot on its own decide on premature release without consulting the central government.

Citing the one remission that Nalini already got — the reduction of death penalty to life imprisonment — the court held that she cannot be compared with other life convicts.

Holding that Nalini can only appeal for release from jail and cannot demand it as a matter of right, it said the crime was committed by her in a meticulous manner.

Tamil Nadu’s Advocate General P.S.Raman submitted to the court March 29 the government’s decision to turn down Nalini’s demand, citing the decision of the Prison Advisory Board that had examined her plea.

The board, headed by the Vellore district collector, listed eight counts for not releasing her, including her reported refusal to express regret over Gandhi’s assassination.

Nalini, an Indian who worked with a private company when she came into contact with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) squad ordered to kill Gandhi, has already spent nearly two decades in prison.

The panel termed Nalini’s crime as severe and said she had sheltered the killers of the former Indian prime minister and was well aware of the conspiracy to kill him.

It warned that there would be law and order problem if Nalini stayed with her parents in Chennai.

Leaders of the Congress party, the ruling DMK’s ally, had opposed the release of Nalini and others convicted for the killing of Gandhi at an election rally at Sriperumbudur near here May 21, 1991.

Gandhi was blown up when a young woman suicide bomber from the LTTE detonated explosives strapped on her body while pretending to touch his feet.

Nalini was seated among the audience at the rally along with another LTTE woman member. According to investigators, she was part of the “killer team” that wanted to assassinate Gandhi for sending the Indian Army on peace keeping mission to Sri Lanka in 1987. The troops fought the LTTE for over two years.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi had said the state government would consult New Delhi on Nalini’s plea that she should be released since she has spent nearly two decades in prison.

Originally, Nalini was convicted on 16 counts of murder and was awarded death penalty. Later, at the intervention of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi’s widow, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

In September last year, Nalini filed a petition in the Madras High Court asking the Tamil Nadu government to convene the advisory board to consider her case for release from jail.

In her petition, she said she was entitled for release in 2005 itself as she had completed 14 years in jail.

After her arrest, Nalini had married LTTE activist known by his nom de guerre Murugan. He is also in prison for the Gandhi killing. They now have a grown-up daughter.

In March last year, Priyanka Vadra, daughter of Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, visited Nalini in the prison. Nalini cited the meeting while demanding her release.