Chennai: Following Supreme Court release orders, the six convicts serving life imprisonment in different jails in Tamil Nadu for their involvement in the 1991 Rajiv Gandhi assassination case will be released on Saturday, officials said. The six convicts to be released are Nalini, Ravichandran, Murugan, Robert Bayas, Jayakumar and Santhan.
The SC issued the release orders on Friday November 11.
Also read:SC orders release of six Rajiv Gandhi assassination convicts including Nalini Sriharan, Ravichandran
Nalini, who was imprisoned in Vellore Jail, and Ravi Chandran, who was imprisoned in Thoothukudi Jail are currently on parole. Santhan and Murugan are in Vellore jail, and Jayakumar and Robert Bayas are lodged in Chennai Puzhal jail. As per the jail authorities, the convicts will be released today as soon as the Supreme Court order reaches the concerned prisons through e-mail.
The group of seven was sentenced to death in 1991 following the killing of Rajiv Gandhi on May 21 that year in Tamil Nadu's Sriperumbudur by a female member of the Sri Lankan militant group LTTE. The convicts executed a suicide bomb blast at a rally of the ex-PM, killing the latter as well as several others in the process. One of the convicts Perarivalan was released on orders of the Supreme Court on May 18.
Following his release, last August Nalini and Ravichandran also filed separate petitions to release them under the same section. Advocate Prabhu, had appeared for the petitioners, said the court relied on the Perarivalan release judgment while ordering the release of the remaining convicts. The court, at the time of the hearing, had laid down grounds for release such as long-term cooperation by the convict(s), good conduct, health condition and reformative acts inside the prison, he said.
