The Tamil Nadu government on Thursday told the Madras High Court that it has granted a month’s parole to Nalini Sriharan, a convict in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, PTI reported. Sriharan and six others are serving a life sentence in the case.
State Public Prosecutor Hassan Mohammed made the statement before a division bench of Justices PN Prakash and R Hemalatha. The court was hearing a petition filed by Nalini’s mother Padmavathi seeking parole for her daughter, according to The Indian Express.
The High Court disposed Padmavathi’s petition after taking note of the public prosecutor’s statement.
During her parole, Nalini will stay at a house in Vellore district with her mother, sister and brother, The Indian Express reported.
In her petition before the High Court, Padmavathi had said that she was suffering from several illnesses and wanted her daughter to stay with her. Padmavathi said that she had requested the state government on several occasions, but her pleas had not been granted, according to PTI.
This is the second time that Nalini has been granted ordinary parole since her arrest in 1991. In July 2019, she had been granted the relief for 50 days. She has also been granted emergency parole on two occasions – to attend her brother’s wedding and after the death of her father.
Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination
Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was killed in Sriperumbudur near Chennai, on May 21, 1991, when an operative of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam detonated her RDX-laden belt.
The LTTE was seeking revenge for the Indian government’s decision to send troops to Sri Lanka to help the island nation fight the Tamil separatists.
In 1998, a court had sentenced 26 people to death for the conspiracy to kill the former prime minister.
A year later, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentences of only four of them – Nalini Sriharan, Murugan, T Suthendraraja alias Santhan and AG Perarivalan. In 2000, Nalini’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
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