Image: DNAAG Perarivalan has been in jail for nearly 32 years, after being convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered his release, invoking powers under Article 142 of the Constitution, and opined that there was inordinate delay in his early release plea by the Governor under Article 161, and that warranted this decision.
In March 2022, A.G. Perarivalan, was granted bail by a Supreme Court bench comprising Justice L Nageswara Rao and Justice BR Gavai. The Bench took into consideration that the applicant has spent over 30 years of his life in prison. He had been lodged in Chennai’s Puzhal Central Prison for nearly 32 years.
Perarivalan, recalled a report in Indian Express was 19 years old at the time of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991. He was accused of buying the two 9-volt batteries used in the bomb that killed Rajiv Gandhi. A TADA court sentenced Perarivalan to death in 1998.
The Supreme Court upheld the sentence the next year but commuted it to life imprisonment in 2014 reported IE. In 2018, a recommendation was given by the Tamil Nadu government “to remit his sentence”.
The Gandhi family set a humane example, and forgave Perarivalan, Nalini
In 2018 Rahul Gandhi, son of Rajiv Gandhi said that he had “no objection” to the release of AG Perarivalan. He, according to musliple media reports, had said his family had no objections to Perarivalan’s release. However, according to a report in India Today from that year, President Ram Nath Kovind had “rejected the Tamil Nadu government’s plea to release the convicts on humanitarian grounds.” On his part, Rahul Gandhi had expressed his and his sister Priyanka Gandhi’s view that they had “completely forgiven” their father’s killers on many occasions.
Priyanka Gandhi too had met Nalini Sriharan, who was another co-accused in the assination case, in Vellore central jail in 2008. “It was my way of coming to peace with the violence and loss that I have experienced,” she had told NDTV’s Barkha Dutt in 2009. Gandhi had said, “When I met her [Nalini], I realised that even though I was not angry with her anymore or didn’t hate her, I was still thinking I was somebody who could forgive her for something she had done.” Her mother Sonia Gandhi, had also sought clemency for Nalini, reported the BBC. Priyanka was quoted as saying, “My mother has been through the suffering, then how could she want the same thing to happen to someone else? Nalini’s child was innocent. What has the child got to do with anything?”
Perarivalan was granted bail in March 2022 this year by the SC, and then approached the Court due to the delay in his release. According to a report in Live Law, “The case witnessed a legal dispute as to who is the appropriate authority to decide the remission plea – whether the President or the Governor.” The SC Bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and BR Gavai observed that the “inordinate delay by the Tamil Nadu Governor in exercising his powers under Article 161 of the Constitution can be subject to judicial review,” stated the news report.
In 2014, the Apex Court had commuted Perarivalan’s death sentence to life imprisonment “on account of the undue and unexplained delay in deciding his mercy plea” stated the news report. In 2018, after the TN Cabinet accepted Perarivalan’s remission plea and forwarded its recommendation to the Governor it was kept in abeyance. The case was heard in the SC November, 2020. In January 2021, the Solicitor General assured the Apex Court that the Governor would decide in three to four days, reported LiveLaw. However it got further delayed. Finally in March 2022, Perarivalan was granted bail after he had been in jail for “32 years (36 years without remission)”.
Will the other six convicts be released soon?
Now, the final Supreme Court verdict may pave the way for the release of the other six convicts in the case, including Nalini Sriharan and her husband Murugan, a Sri Lankan national, reported NDTV.
“I firmly believe there is no need for capital punishment,” said AG Perarivalan said hours after the Supreme Court ordered for his release, reported NDTV. He told the media, “I have just come out. It has been 31 years of legal battle. I have to breathe a bit. Give me some time… I clearly believe there is no need for capital punishment. Not just for mercy…many justices including Supreme Court chief justices have said so and there are many examples. Everybody is human.”
According to the NDTV report Chief Minister M K Stalin welcomed the judgement and said it could find a place in “Justice-law-political-administrative history.”
The case as it unfolded, as reported by various news media
May 21, 1991: Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated at Sriperumbudur, after assassin, Dhanu, triggers a belt bomb, 16 others are also killed.
May 22, 1991: Investigations begin, first by CB-CID team, then a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
June 11, 1991: CBI arrests 19-year-old A G Perarivalan, he is booked under the Terrorism and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA).
1998: TADA court sentences 26 accused to death including Nalini and Perarivalan.
1999: Supreme Court upholds the death sentence of Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan and Nalini.
2000: Nalini’s death penalty is commuted to life by the then Tamil Nadu governor. A public appeal for it had also been made by Sonia Gandhi.
2001: Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan, submit their mercy pleas to the President of India. Perarivalan in his 2006 autobiography, “An Appeal from the Death Row”, claims “he was implicated in the conspiracy by taking a confession under duress that he bought a battery to make the bomb.”
2011: President Pratibha Patil, rejects their mercy petitions after 11 years. The death row convicts were to be hanged on September 9, 2011, but Madras HC stayed execution orders. Then TN chief minister, J Jayalalithaa, passes resolution seeking commutation of the death sentence.
2015: Perarivalan submits a mercy petition to the Tamil Nadu Governor, later moves Supreme Court.
2017: The Tamil Nadu government grants parole to Perarivalan, the first after his arrest in 1991.
2018: The SC asserts that the Governor has the right to decide on Perarivalan’s remission petition.
2018: The then TN CM Edappadi K Palaniswami recommended the release of all seven convicts.
2021: SC orders TN to decide, else the court will be forced to release them citing the inordinate delay.
2021: Perarivalan gets out on parole.
March 9, 2022: The Supreme Court grants bail to Perarivalan.
May 18, 2022: The Supreme Court orders Perarivalan be released. He is now a free man.