Chennai: Santhan, a 55-year-old convict in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case who was released in November 2022, passed away Wednesday at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGH) in Chennai.
Santhan alias T. Suthenthiraraja had spent 32 years in prison when he was finally released in 2022. Since then, he had been lodged at a special camp at Tiruchirappalli for convicted foreigners. The others convicted in the case were Nalini Sriharan, Sriharan alias Murugan, Robert Payas, Ravichandran, and Jayakumar.
A Sri Lankan citizen, Santhan was admitted to RGGGH in January after he was diagnosed with cryptogenic cirrhosis with liver failure unrelated to alcohol consumption. According to hospital officials, he died of a cardiac arrest at 7.50 am Wednesday — his second that morning.
His death came a week after the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) — the office that maintains a record of foreign nationals visiting India on long-term visas — approved Santhan’s request for deportation to Sri Lanka.
Hospital authorities said his body would be handed over to his family after postmortem, adding that legal arrangements were underway for it to be sent back to Sri Lanka.
Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on 21 May, 1991, while he was campaigning for that year’s general election at Tamil Nadu’s Sriperumbudur. His assassin, Kalaivani Rajaratnam alias Dhanu — a woman suicide bomber from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) — detonated a bomb strapped under her dress while pretending to touch his feet.
The bomb killed not only Gandhi and the assassin but also 14 others.
In a ruling in May 1999, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentences of four convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case — Perarivalan, Murugan, Santhan, and Nalini — but freed 19 others who had been convicted by a lower court.
The court also commuted the death sentences of Robert Payas, Ravichandran, and Jayakumar to life. In 2000, based on Congress leader and the former prime minister’s wife Sonia’s appeal and the Tamil Nadu government’s recommendation, Nalini’s death sentence was commuted. Eventually, the sentences of the others, too, were commuted.
Also Read: Take care, Rajiv Gandhi told Prabhakaran. Even gave bulletproof vest before Sri Lanka Accord
Santhan, others released, and the request to go home
In its chargesheet, the CBI had named Santhan as an LTTE intelligence member.
In 2015, Perarivalan, one of the accused in the assassination case, had sought a mercy petition under Article 161 of the Constitution. Three years later, the Supreme Court, hearing Perarivalan’s appeal for a remission application, asked Tamil Naud’s then-governor Banwarilal Purohit to consider the mercy petition.
In September 2018, Tamil Nadu’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (AIADMK) cabinet passed a resolution recommending the release of all seven convicts in the assassination case under Article 161 of the Constitution.
But the recommendation, made to Purohit, was put on hold.
After it was voted to power in 2021, the DMK government under M.K. Stalin urged then President of India Ram Nath Kovind to make a decision and rehired senior counsel Rakesh Dwivedi for the case. The convicts were finally released after a long legal battle on 11 November, 2022.
Santhan was the only one of the four convicts to request a return to Sri Lanka — the others released with him, Murugan, Robert Payas, and Jayakumar, all asked to be sent to relatives in Europe.
In his letter written from the Trichy camp in June last year, Santhan said he had made written requests to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Minister of External AffairsS. Jaishankar to either send him back to Sri Lanka or give him access to the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commission office in Chennai to renew his identity proof. These requests did not get him any reply he had said in the letter.
With no access to mobile phones, Santhan had lamented that only blood relatives could meet him, and that, for a foreigner like him, there was no one here in India.
“For 32 years, I have not seen my mother. I couldn’t be with my father in his last years and it has been troubling me. If my desire to be with my mom during her last days is wrong, then no one needs to support me,” Santhan had written.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
Also Read: LTTE’s ‘plan B’ to eliminate Rajiv Gandhi in New Delhi using human bomb Athirai