Centre has turned down Tamil Nadu government’s proposal to free seven killers of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. This is the second time that the proposal has been rejected by the Centre in a span of two years.
As per the reports, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has told the state government that ‘since the matter is sub-judice in Supreme Court, it has no authority to release the prisoners’.
The seven convicts are V. Sriharan alias Murugan, A.G. Perarivalan, T. Suthendraraja alias Santhan, Jayakumar, Robert Payas, Ravichandran and Nalini.
The Tamil Nadu government had written a letter to Centre seeking their views on its decision to release all the seven convicts. The state government had said that ‘it has decided to remit the sentences of life imprisonment and to release the seven persons, since all the seven have already served imprisonment for 24 years’.
The letter was written after the state government received petitions from the convicts with request to release them considering the years they have already spent in the prison.
In 1999, the Supreme Court found the seven guilty of conspiring to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991.
(With Agencies Input)