Convict in Rajiv assassination plot seeks UNHRC help for release
Nalini Murugan, who was convicted for her role in the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, has moved the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) urging the global body to apply pressure on the government of India to release her from prison.
Murugan was arrested days after Gandhi was killed by a woman suicide bomber of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the former Sri Lankan militant organisation, in Sriperumbudur on May 21, 1991, and has been in jail since then. Twentysix people were convicted in 1998 for their roles in planning and carrying out the murder.
In the petition sent to the UNHRC high commissioner in Geneva in Switzerland, Murugan has alleged she has suffered discrimination at the hands of the Indian government as well as the state government of Tamil Nadu for “more than 16 years since I had become eligible to be released from prison as early as in 2001.”
“I have been denied the benefit of early release from prison, which is available to all life convicts in the country, only on the ground that I was convicted in the case of assassination of Rajiv Gandhi … I have not been considered only on political grounds, not on legal grounds,” Murugan said in the petition.
She has moved the Madras HC several times demanding her release but the state government has opposed her pleas, saying she has to spend her life in jail. A life sentence is usually for 14 years.