High Court calls for trial court judgment in former PM Rajiv Gandhi murder case

Chennai: The first bench of the Madras High Court on Tuesday called for a copy of the order of the Tada Court in Poonamallee, which had passed an order on January 28, 1998 imposing death sentence to all the 26 accused in the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated at an election public meeting organised by the Congress party at Sriperumbudur in the night of 21 May 1991. After a prolonged day-to-day trial for over six years, the trial court in Poonamallee delivered the judgment running to more than 1,000 pages in January 1998, imposing death sentence on all the 26 accused, including Nalini, her husband Sri Haran alias Murugan and A G Perarivalan and four others. The first bench of Chief Justice M N Bhandari and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy sought for a copy of the judgment today, when Nalini’s petition seeking premature release, even without the consent of the State Governor, came up for further hearing. The bench wanted to know under what provisions of the TADA Act, Nalini was convicted and sentenced to death penalty (later commuted to life). The previous AIADMK cabinet in September 2018, had passed a resolution and forwarded its recommendation to the then Governor to order the premature release of all the seven life convicts, under Article 161 of the Constitution. As there was no response from the Governor, Nalini and others had filed several petitions in the High Court for a direction to the Governor to consider their plea. But they were all rejected by the High Court. Hence, Nalini filed the present writ petition praying the court to order her release even without the consent of the Governor. It was way back on 28 January, 1998, all the 26 accused were sentenced to death by the Poonamallee TADA Court. On an appeal, on May 11, 1999, the Supreme Court had upheld the death sentence of four – Murugan, Nalini, Santhan and Perarivalan, commuted to life for three – Ravichandran, Robert Payas and Jayakumar and acquitted the remaining 19 accused, including photographer Subha Sundaram. Upon the intervention of Rajiv Gandhi’s widow and the then Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who petitioned for clemency for the sake of Nalini’s daughter, the death sentence of Nalini was commuted to life imprisonment in April, 2000. The death sentence in respect of the remaining three – Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan – was commuted to life in 2014. Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.