How Tamil Nadu got Rajiv Gandhi convicts released from prison

This has always been an emotive one in TN with almost all political parties in the state barring Congress and BJP supporting their premature release

While ordering the release of the remaining six convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case last week, the Supreme Court referred to a 2018 resolution passed by the Tamil Nadu government headed by AIADMK that they be freed from prison and sent to the Governor.

In its arguments in the Supreme Court, in cases filed by A G Perarivalan, and S Nalini, the Tamil Nadu government used the resolution as a premise to demand their release from prison. The government contended that they have completed their jail term as the apex court commuted their death sentence to life – all the seven remained in jail for 31 years since their arrest in 1991.

The prime argument was that the Governor ought to have released the seven convicts — Perarivalan, Nalini, Santhan, Murugan, Ravichandran, Robert Payas, and Jayakumar — accepting the recommendations of the “democratically-elected government” and that he had no basis to “sit on” the resolution for four years.

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Perarivalan, Nalini, Santhan and Murugan were sentenced to death in 1999, while Payas, Jayakumar, and Ravichandran were awarded life sentences. The death sentence for Nalini and three others were also commuted to life in 2000 and 2014 respectively.

DMK, which came to power in May 2021, saw the issue from the prism of federalism and a state’s rights by asking the President of India to take a call on the 2018 Cabinet resolution. In the Supreme Court, the DMK rehired senior counsel Rakesh Dwivedi, who was replaced with another lawyer by the AIADMK government in 2018, to argue the case – his arguments built the base for Perarivalan’s release in May 2022.

The issue of seven convicts has always been an emotive one in Tamil Nadu with almost all political parties in the state barring Congress and BJP supporting their premature release from prison. The parties, including AIADMK which was once stridently anti-LTTE and remained silent on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue, came under stringent criticism from state Congress for “bothering only about the seven Tamils”, and leaving in the lurch families of 15 persons who were also killed along with Rajiv Gandhi.

AIADMK’s relationship with LTTE and Lankan Tamils has always been tricky – party founder MGR supported their cause, while Jayalalithaa admonished them, more so after Rajiv’s assassination in 1991.

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But she too converted in 2009 and turned into an ardent supporter of the cause – Jayalalithaa even proclaimed that she would send the Indian Army to the island nation to carve out a separate nation for Tamils if the Third Front came to power -- only to cash in on the pro-Tamil sentiments that were on a high due to the last phase of the civil war.

The parties, including AIADMK which was once stridently anti-LTTE and remained silent on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue, came under stringent criticism from state Congress for “bothering only about the seven Tamils”, and leaving in the lurch families of 15 persons who were also killed along with Rajiv Gandhi.

While the death sentence awarded to Nalini was commuted to life in 2000 by the then Governor Fatima Beevi on an appeal from Rajiv Gandhi’s wife Sonia Gandhi, the issue didn’t invoke much political response till 2011 when President Prathiba Patil rejected mercy petitions of Perarivalan, Santhan, and Murugan.

The issue attained national significance yet again in August 2011 when the then Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, who had sought a ban on LTTE after Rajiv’s death in 1991, moved a resolution in the state assembly demanding that the death sentence of the trio be commuted to life.

The DMK too supported the resolution and there was almost no opposition to the demand that mercy be shown to the convicts. To top it all, Jayalalithaa decided to release all the seven convicts after the Supreme Court commuted the death sentence awarded to Perarivalan, Murugan, and Santhan on February 18, 2014, on the grounds that the decision on their mercy petitions took longer time, as the Lok Sabha elections were just months away.

The then UPA-II government led by Congress moved the Supreme Court and got a stay by arguing that only the Union Government can decide on the release of people who were punished in cases investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).