India’s apex Court dismisses Govt.’s review plea on mercy petition in Rajiv’s assassination case
Thursday, 13 March 2014 00:26
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REUTERS: The Supreme Court dismissed review petition by the federal government on Wednesday (12) that sought the top court to revisit its 21 January order, which said the unexplained and inordinate delay in deciding the mercy petition was a ground for commuting death sentence to life imprisonment in former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination case.
“The review petition was rightly dismissed by the Supreme Court. Earlier also there were several judgments in the identical facts situation wherever there was delay in executing death sentence, the Supreme Court as commuted death sentence into life sentence. So in identical fact situation whatever may be the nature of offence, whatever may be the seriousness but now the Supreme court will apply this same fact situation to those cases and their death sentence would be commuted to life,” said lawyer Shivaji M. Jadhav.
Earlier the apex court had commuted death penalties of 15 convicts to life sentences after the Government failed to explain as to why there has been delay on the part of the Government in deciding on their mercy petitions.
On 18 February, the Supreme Court had also commuted the death sentences of three accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination to life term because of an 11-year delay in deciding on their petitions for mercy.
The court had then granted powers to the Tamil Nadu government to exercise its remission powers under the Sections 432 and 433 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPc). On 19 February, the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister decided to release all the seven convicts.
Jayalalithaa’s move was in a bid to woo voters in her state ahead of the parliamentary elections, by showing that she can outdo her rivals when it comes to supporting Tamils and standing up to New Delhi, analysts said.
India’s former PM Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber at an election rally in Sriperumbedur on 21 May, 1991.
The three Indian men - tried as Santhan, Murugan, Perarivalan - were members of a Sri Lankan ethnic Tamil separatist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and Gandhi’s killing was seen as an act of retaliation after he sent Indian peacekeepers to Sri Lanka in 1987.
Ethnic Tamils are the majority community in Tamil Nadu and a minority in Sri Lanka where the Government finally crushed the LTTE rebels in 2009, after a 25-year war.
The three were convicted of involvement in 1998 and sentenced to death by hanging. A fourth person, a woman, was also given the death sentence but it was later commuted to a life term.
