Dr Senthilkumar, a DMK MP from Dharmapuri parliamentary constituency in Tamil Nadu, recently took to Twitter to congratulate A G Perarivalan, a man convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case for his early release from the jail.
Sharing Perarivalan’s picture, the DMK MP tweeted “Advance Congratulations”. Curiously, Dr Senthilkumar wrote ‘Congratulations’ in Tamil, a native language of Tamil Nadu but which is not widely understood or known in other parts of the country.
It is worth noting that Perarivalan was jailed for procuring nine-volt batteries, which were allegedly used in the improvised explosive device (IED) that had killed Rajiv Gandhi. The former PM was assassinated by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) suicide bomber during an election rally in Sriperumbudur in May 1991.
After serving in jail for decades, Perarivalan moved a mercy petition to seek clemency. Then in February 2014, the Supreme Court commuted Perarivalan’s death sentence to life imprisonment, citing the Centre’s 11-year delay in deciding mercy petitions.
Perarivalan subsequently applied for a pardon on 30 December 2015. Close to three years later, in 2018, the Supreme Court asked the Governor to decide the pardon plea as he deemed fit. In 2018, the Council of Ministers of the Tamil Nadu government also recommended the release of 7 convicts, including Perarivalan.
Recently, files on the premature release of seven Rajiv Gandhi assassination convicts were referred to the President by Governor RN Ravi. The Supreme Court had then pulled up the Governor, stating that he was bound by the state cabinet’s decision to release AG Perarivalan, who had served 36 years of his life term in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and castigated his action of sending the mercy plea to the President. The top court has reserved its verdict on the plea filed by AG Perarivalan seeking premature release from jail.
Kin of victims who died alongside Rajiv Gandhi question the Gandhi family’s decision to ‘forgive’ the convicts of the former PM’s assassination
While the Gandhi family had chosen to ‘forgive’ the convicts responsible for the death of Rajiv Gandhi, the kin of those who had died along with the former PM were not too happy with the Gandhi family’s move to grant mercy to the culprits.
When the Tamil Nadu government recommended the release of seven life convicts in the case in 2018, the family members of the victims had met Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit and urged him to not give consent to the same.
“All we received of my mother were pieces wrapped in a blood-stained blanket. The attack on Rajiv Gandhi orphaned me and my siblings. 12 other families suffered because of it. But politicians don’t seem to consider the trauma we have been through. They want to release the murderers for their own political gains and we all condemn this,” S Abbas, whose mother died along with Rajiv Gandhi in the blast had told The News Minute in 2018.
