Don’t hang Rajiv Gandhi killers, says judge

Kottayam, 24 Feb 2013 (IANS): A former judge who headed a bench that awarded death sentence to four for the killing of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi said Sunday that the convicts should not be hanged.

 

K.T. Thomas said that since Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan had spent 22 years in prison, hanging them now would amount to punishing them twice for the same crime.

 

The three men are lodged at the Vellore jail in Tamil Nadu.

 

Thomas told reporters here: "If they are going to be awarded (death sentence) after spending 22 years in jail, it would be like giving them two punishment for the same crime, which is against the constitution."

 

He urged President Pranab Mukherjee to review his decision to reject their mercy petition.

 

"The president should reconsider this because as of now the three have undergone a punishment more than the term of life imprisonment," he said.

 

In 1999, a three-member Supreme Court bench comprising Thomas, Justice D.P. Wadwah and Justice S.S.M. Quadri awarded death punishment to Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan and Murugan’s wife Nalini.

 

Thomas dissented on death punishment to Nalini, whose sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after then president Pratibha Patil accepted her mercy petition.

 

While Perarivalan and Murugan are Indian citizens, Santhan and Murugan are from Sri Lanka.

 

A Tamil Tiger woman suicide bomber assassinated Rajiv Gandhi at an election rally near Chennai May 21, 1991.

 

All four listed in the case were charged with contributing to the killing. Among those wanted for the assassination were the Tamil Tigers chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, who was killed in Sri Lanka in 2009.

 

Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a woman suicide bomber on May 21, 1991, at Sriperumbudur.

 

A designated court had in 1998 imposed death penalty on 26 persons but when the case reached the Supreme Court, capital punishment was confirmed only for four -- Nalini, Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan.

 

Nalini’s death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment by the Tamil Nadu Governor in 2000 following a recommendation by the state cabinet and a public appeal by Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

 

The execution of the remaining three convicts, which was scheduled for September 9, 2011, was stayed by Madras High Court for six weeks in August of that year. The case has since been transferred to the apex court.

 

Prior to this, the mercy petitions of the three were rejected in 2011 by Pratibha Patil when she was the President, which was challenged by them.