Indian Supreme Court acquits Rajiv Gandhi assassin AG Perarivalan after 30 years
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India's Supreme Court has ordered the release of a convict involved in the 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
AG Perarivalan was sentenced to 30 years in prison and was sentenced to death in 1998.
AG Perarivalan was arrested at the age of 19 and was accused of buying batteries used in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.
The 26 convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case were earlier sentenced to death, but the Supreme Court later upheld the death sentences of only four. Three were sentenced to life in prison, while the other 19 were acquitted.
Indian Supreme Court decision
A three-member bench of the Supreme Court of India heard the case on Wednesday.
The court ordered the release of AG Perari Whelan, citing a section of the Indian Constitution which gives extraordinary powers to administer justice in any case.
In 2000, the Governor of Tamil Nadu abolished the death sentence of a woman named Nalini under the same section.
Priyanka Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi's daughter, had met Nalini Morogan in Vellore Jail, one of the four executed persons, but at the time of her arrest, Nalini was pregnant and at the request of Rajiv Gandhi's widow Sonia Gandhi, The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
Congress party president Rahul Gandhi had also said that he and his sister had forgiven their father's killers.
In 2014, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentences of all the accused, citing an 11-year delay in the decision on mercy appeals filed by them.
However, the government of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu later recommended to the state governor that all the accused lodged in various jails in the state be released.
The state government had said at the time that "public sentiment" was in favor of releasing them.
Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Gandhi was killed by Tamil Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) activists in a suicide attack on May 21, 1991.
The suicide bomber was a girl named Dhanu, and the attack took place in Tamil Nadu, where a large number of people fleeing the Sri Lankan civil war had taken refuge in India.
Rajiv Gandhi sent a peace force to Sri Lanka in 1987 after signing an agreement with Sri Lanka to end the civil war, but within a few months, fighting broke out between the Indian Army and the Tamil Tigers.
It is said that Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by the Tamil Tigers for revenge.
AG Perari Whelan was also an LTTE activist. It should be noted that the Tamil Tigers were defeated by the Sri Lankan Army in 2009.