Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination: Death sentence for three commuted

Supreme Court announces life imprisonment for three.


Reuters February 19, 2014
his photograph taken on May 24, 1991 shows the funeral procession for slain prime minister Rajiv Gandhi moving through the crowded streets of New Delhi. PHOTO: AFP/ FILE

NEW DELHI:


India’s Supreme Court commuted death sentences on three men for involvement in the killing of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi to life imprisonment on Tuesday because of an 11-year delay in deciding on their petitions for mercy.


Gandhi was killed by an ethnic Tamil suicide bomber in May 1991. The three Indian men - Santhan, Murugan, Perarivalan - were members of a Sri Lankan ethnic Tamil separatist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The three were convicted of involvement in 1998 and sentenced to death by hanging. A fourth person, a woman, was also given the death sentence but it was later commuted to a life term.

The men appealed for mercy but successive Indian presidents gave no decision until 2011, when their plea was rejected. “Delay in deciding mercy pleas is one of the grounds to commute the death sentence to life imprisonment,” the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice P. Sathasivam, said.

In November 2012, India ended what many rights groups had interpreted as an undeclared moratorium on capital punishment when it executed a gunman convicted for the 2008 attack on Mumbai.

Three months later, it hanged a man from Kashmir for a 2001 militant attack on parliament. The Supreme Court said on Tuesday the administration must move faster on deciding on mercy petitions in the interest of justice.

Last month, the Supreme Court commuted the sentences of 15 death row prisoners to life in jail on the grounds of delay.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 19th, 2014.

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