Earlier today, the Congress party expressed its disapproval after the Supreme Court of India ordered the release of all six convicts involved in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination.
“The Congress party criticises it and finds it wholly untenable,” a statement released by senior party leader Jairam Ramesh said.
My statement on the decision of the Supreme Court to free the remaining killers of former PM Shri. Rajiv Gandhi pic.twitter.com/ErwqnDGZLc
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) November 11, 2022
“The decision of the Supreme Court to free the remaining killers of former PM Shri Rajiv Gandhi is totally unacceptable and completely erroneous,” the statement further read, adding that the apex court had not acted in consonance with the spirit of India on the matter.
While the party studiously failed to criticise the Gandhi family—Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi— all of whom have either verbally or in writing, granted forgiveness to Rajiv Gandhi’s killers and called for the remission of their punishment, the party’s politically motivated campaign against the suspension of the prison sentence of Bilkis Bano rapists meant that it had little wriggle room to brush aside the apex court’s decision of freeing the former PM’s assassins.
Sonia Gandhi writes a letter seeking pardon for Rajiv Gandhi’s killers
Sonia Gandhi, the wife of Rajiv Gandhi and matriarch of the Congress party, had written a letter seeking a pardon for the killers of the former PM. In 1999, Sonia Gandhi, then Congress party president, wrote a letter to then-president, K R Narayanan, asking him to commute the capital punishment awarded to the three men and Murugan’s wife, Nalini.
“Our family does not contemplate that the four people should be hanged for the killing of my beloved husband. Myself as well as my son, my daughter does not want these four people should be hanged (sic),” Gandhi is quoted as saying in the letter that has been translated back into English.
The letter further adds that Sonia and her children were against the death penalty awarded to Nalini, who had an eight-year-old daughter at the time.
“My children suffered at the death of my beloved husband Rajiv Gandhi to a great extent, and therefore we do not favour that another child in the world should lose mother and father (sic),” Sonia Gandhi is quoted as saying in the letter.
Rahul Gandhi said he had forgiven his father’s killers; Priyanka Gandhi echoed her brother’s sentiments and had met convict Nalini in jail
Rahul Gandhi, too, has forgiven the killers of his father. In his interaction with the students of a state-run women’s college in Puducherry in 2019, Gandhi said that he had forgiven his father’s killer and had no feelings of “anger or hatred” against them.
In conformity to the content of a letter reportedly written by Sonia Gandhi seeking a pardon for the killers of Rajiv Gandhi, her daughter and Rahul’s sister, Priyanka Gandhi, too, had pardoned the assassins responsible for the death of her father and India’s then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi. In a hagiographic article on Priyanka Gandhi, the author explained how she had transformed from a “furious 19-year-old” to a “forgiving daughter”. In fact, Priyanka Gandhi also met Nalini Sriharan—one of the six convicts in the case—in jail in 2008. Nalini later termed the meeting with Priyanka Gandhi as “life-changing”, stating that she found solace in the encounter as it “cleansed” her of the insults and accusations targeted at her.
However, Congress leaders, for whom Gandhis are beyond reproach and their criticism strictly out of bounds—that may inevitably lead to disciplinary action or expulsion—turned a blind eye to the amnesty letter and pardon appeals made by the Gandhis for the assassins of Rajiv Gandhi.
But when the Supreme Court on Friday freed six convicts involved in the killing of Rajiv Gandhi, the party issued a statement tersely condemning the verdict and criticising the court for not acting in conformity with the “spirit of India”.
