New Delhi: India’s Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of six convicts in the1991 Rajiv Gandhi assassination plot, evoking protests from the Congress even though the former prime minister’s widow and children have been advocating their freedom for years.

Responding to the court’s decision to free Nalini Sriharan and five other convicts, the Congress said it “disagreed with Sonia Gandhi”, who had pleaded for their release from prison.

“Sonia Gandhi, above all, is entitled to her personal views. But, with the greatest respect, the party doesn’t agree and has made our view clear. In this case, the Congress views are the same as that of the central government.

“The party does not agree with Sonia Gandhi’s view, has never agreed with that view, and has made this view clear for years,” Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi told NDTV.

The Congress said it would seek legal remedy.

“Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination was not like any other crime. This is a national issue, not a local murder.”

Nalini Sriharan approached the apex court when in May it used special powers to free one of the convicts, AG Perarivalan.

All seven convicts in the case have spent more than 30 years in prison.

Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on May 21, 1991, at Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, by a woman suicide bomber of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) group.

Seven convicts were sentenced to death for their role in the killing, and the Gandhi family campaigned to commute the sentence and later pressed for their freedom.

In 2000, Nalini Sriharan’s sentence was reduced to a life term on the intervention of Sonia Gandhi, the former Congress president. She had filed a clemency petition

that pointed out that Nalini was pregnant when she was arrested.

The sentence of six more convicts was also commuted in 2014. The same year, then Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalitha initiated moves to free them.

Priyanka meets killer

In 2008, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the daughter of Rajiv Gandhi, met Nalini in a prison in Tamil Nadu’s Vellore. “Although I was not angry anymore, I did not hate her... and I wanted to meet her, I was still thinking that I was somebody who could forgive her for something she had done. And then I met her, and I realised, what am I talking about...?” Priyanka Gandhi told NDTV.

But the Congress was adamant in its opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision. “We are consistent about our stand. This is an institutional matter. The sovereignty, integrity and the identity of a nation is involved in the assassination of a former prime minister,” Mr Singhvi said.

Asked whether the party also disagreed with its ally DMK, which rules Tamil Nadu, Mr Singhvi shot back. “They are our allies. We don’t even agree with Sonia Gandhi.”

Mr Singhvi questioned why the Supreme Court would invoke special powers “that it doesn’t have” to free convicted assassins of a former prime minister.

“Has the larger issue of sovereignty and integrity of a nation been taken into account? It was an attack on India’s integrity,” NDTV quoted him as saying.

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2022