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Rajiv assassination: SC dismisses Nalini's plea

by IBNS 27 Oct 2014, 07:50 am

New Delhi, Oct 27 (IBNS): The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the petition of S Nalini, undergoing life imprisonment in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, challenging the law mandating of the Centre's approval for her release and that of six other convicts.

Nalini had challenged Section 435(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code which mandates the state government to consult the Centre before premature release of a convict if the case was investigated by the CBI.

While hearing the plea, a bench comprising Chief Justice H.L. Dattu and Justices M.B. Lokur and A.K. Sikri rejected it.

The bench also said that said it is not "interested."

Rajiv Gandhi, the sixth Prime Minister of India, was killed at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu on 21 May 1991. At least 14 others were also killed in the blasts by a suicide bomber - Dhanu- sent by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was a terror outfit fighting for a free land for the ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka.  

Nalini, a convict in the case, has been in jail for the last 23 years and undergoing life imprisonment.

She was sentenced to death by the trial court in the case on Jan 28, 1998.

But her death sentence was commuted to life term by the Tamil Nadu Governor on April 24, 2000. 

The Centre had earlier contended that the Tamil Nadu government can't release the convicts without its approval and had derailed the state government's decision to release them. 

After the apex court had commuted the death sentence of convicts Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan, the Tamil Nadu government on Feb 19 had proposed to remit the sentences of all seven lifers, including the three, and release them.