Rajiv Gandhi killers to be freed
The government in India’s Tamil Nadu state has decided to free seven people convicted of plotting the assassination of former PM Rajiv Gandhi.
The six men and a woman were members of the Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger rebel group.
The move came a day after the Supreme Court commuted the death sentences of three of the convicts, citing delays in deciding their mercy pleas.
Gandhi’s murder in May 1991 was seen as retaliation for the sending of Indian peacekeepers to Sri Lanka in 1987.
The decision to free the prisoners was taken on Wednesday morning at a cabinet meeting chaired by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha.
Ms Jayalalitha told the state assembly later that the government would send the cabinet decision to the federal government for approval.
“If there is no reply within three days from the centre, the state government will release all the seven... in accordance with the powers vested with the state government,” she said.
Among the prisoners to be released are the three men whose death sentences were commuted on Tuesday by the Supreme Court - Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan. They have been in jail for more than 20 years and on death row since 1998.
The court ruled that they should be spared the death sentence as it was inhumane to keep them for so long under the threat of execution.
Nalini Sriharan, an Indian Tamil woman who will also be released, was also given the death penalty by the trial court in 1998, but the authorities commuted this to life imprisonment in 2000.