Rajiv Gandhi's killers to stay in jail for now as SC defers case

The Supreme Court on Friday referred to a larger constitutional bench the case on releasing those convicted of the murder of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. The decision to refer the case was pronounced by a bench headed by Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam. This will be the Chief Justice’s last working day, he retires on 27 April. The assassins will continue to remain in jail. The Supreme Court also framed seven questions for the Constitution Bench to decide on the issue of remission. The Tamil Nadu government made the controversial decision to release all the convicts in the case, following a Supreme Court decision to commute the death sentence for three of them, factoring in an 11-year delay in deciding their mercy petitions. [caption id=“attachment_1496619” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in May 1991. Reuters[/caption] The three whose sentences were commuted were: V Sriharan alias Murugan, AG Perarivalan and T Suthendraraja alias Santhan. The other four were serving life sentences. The decision taken by Jayalalithaa evoked strong responses from across the political spectrum with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh slamming the move. In a statement, he had said: “The release of the killers of a former prime minister of India and our great leader, as well as several other innocent Indians, would be contrary to all principles of justice”. On 20 February, a bench headed by the CJI has stayed the state government’s order, saying there have been procedural lapses on the part of the state. On 1 April, the Supreme Court had refuses to review its verdict commuting the death sentence of three convicts and dismissed the Centre’s review petition. “We have carefully gone through the review petition and the connected papers. We find no merit in the review petition and the same is accordingly dismissed,” a bench of Chief Justice P Sathasivam and justices Ranjan Gogoi and S K Singh said. The Union government had contended in its petition that the three-judge bench did not consider the merits of the case and also ventured into the domain of government by commuting the death sentence in the case. It had further contended the 18 February judgement was passed without jurisdiction by the three-judge bench instead of by a larger bench of five judges as the case involved substantial interpretation of law and provisions of the constitution. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in May 1991. His assassins were convicted by a TADA court in January 1998 and were awarded death sentence, which was confirmed by the apex court May 11, 1999.