Not involved in Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, says convict Nalini Sriharan

I was convicted for being a part of the team that plotted the assassination, Sriharan said

Nalini Sriharan, one of the convicts in Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991, was released on Saturday by the Supreme Court. After being released from jail, Sriharan maintained her innocence saying she was not involved in the conspiracy, but was convicted for being a part of the team that plotted the assassination.

"I don't have any role at all, really. I know I'm convicted. But to my heart, and to my conscience... it knows what happened," she told NDTV.

Sriharan was sentenced to death for her role in the 1991 assassination of Gandhi. Later, the sentence was reduced to a life term on the intervention of Sonia Gandhi.

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She told NDTV that before her death sentence was commuted in 2001, she expected to be executed any time and prepared seven times to be hanged.

Sriharan recalled meeting Priyanka Gandhi in Jail. She said, “She (Priyanka Gandhi) is a very kind person. She was an angel. And she made me respect myself because... we were not treated properly in jail. She made me sit with her.”

Sriharan said that Priynaka Gandhi became emotional while asking me about her father’s killing.

Sriharan told about her daughter Harithra, a doctor in London, who was born in 1992 in prison. She was granted parole in 2019 for attending her daughter’s wedding.

The Supreme Court’s decision to commute the sentence of convicts was welcomed by many in Tamil Nadu.