New Delhi: A.G. Perarivalan, one of the seven convicts serving a life sentence in connection with the May 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was Monday granted another week of parole by the Supreme Court to seek medical treatment.
Perarivalan was a teenage sympathiser of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) when he was arrested 29 years ago for being a part of the terrorist group’s conspiracy to kill Gandhi.
The Supreme Court decision comes amid growing pressure from the courts for a decision from the Tamil Nadu governor on a recommendation made by the state government regarding the release of the seven convicts.
Earlier this month, the CBI told the Supreme Court that Perarivalan was not a “subject matter” of the investigation being done by the Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA), a CBI-led group looking into the larger conspiracy surrounding Gandhi’s assassination.
In an affidavit filed in the court on 20 November, the CBI said it was up to the Tamil Nadu governor to decide whether to release him.
Perarivalan is believed to have been 19 when he was arrested for his involvement in Gandhi’s assassination. He procured batteries that were used to build the bomb that packed the vest Gandhi’s killer — a suicide bomber — wore to his rally in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, on the evening of 21 May 1991.
Perarivalan has been lodged in Chennai’s Puzhal Central Prison for the last 29 years. ThePrint revisits the case and explains where the question of Perarivalan’s release stands.
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Arrest and conviction
Perarivalan, also known as Arivu, was arrested on 11 June 1991 and was convicted of having procured a set of 9V batteries and other materials that were used to make the bomb that killed Gandhi. The material was used by an LTTE member, Sivarasan, who masterminded the conspiracy.
Perarivalan, who was born in Tamil Nadu, was 19 years old at the time. He had just completed a diploma in electronics and communication and was staying in Chennai. Perarivalan and his family have maintained since 1991 that he is innocent of any involvement in the assassination.
In 1998, under the now discontinued Terrorism And Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), the CBI filed a case against 41 people, including Perarivalan.
Later that year, a trial court sentenced Perarivalan along with 25 others to death for their involvement in the case.
This number fell to seven after the Supreme Court freed 19 accused on appeal. The seven were Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan, Nalini, Robert Payas, Jayakumar and Ravichandran. In 1999, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for the first four, and commuted the sentences of the latter three.
Perarivalan remained on death row until 2014, when the Supreme Court commuted his and two others’ death sentence on account of an 11-year delay on the part of the President to respond to their mercy petitions. Nalini’s death sentence was commuted in 2000 by the Tamil Nadu governor.
The case for Perarivalan’s ‘innocence’
In 2013, Perarivalan’s case took a turn after V. Thiagarajan, a former superintendent of police in the CBI, admitted to having altered his confession.
Thiagarajan told documentary-makers from the People’s Movement Against Death Penalty, an organisation founded by the late Supreme Court judge V.R. Krishna Iyer, that he did not take down his statement verbatim.
“Arivu told me that he did not know why they asked him to buy that [the battery]. But I did not record that in the confessional statement. Then the investigation was in progress, so that particular statement I did not record. Strictly speaking, law expects you to record a statement verbatim… we don’t do that in practice,” Thiagarajan had said, as quoted in a report in The Hindu.
In 2017, Thiagarajan submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court, saying Perarivalan was “totally in the dark as to the purpose for which the batteries were purchased”.
Perarivalan sought pardon from the governor in 2015. In the absence of any action, his mother moved a plea on his behalf in the Supreme Court, which said in 2018 that the governor could take a decision on the pardon plea as he “deemed fit”.
The same year, the Tamil Nadu cabinet recommended the release of all seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case under Article 161 of the Constitution, which allows the governor to grant pardon or commute sentences in cases pertaining to laws to which “executive power of the state extends”.
The governor has yet to take a decision in the matter.
In July this year, the Tamil Nadu government told the Madras High Court that the governor will take a decision once the MDMA completes its probe in the case. With the MDMA telling the Supreme Court that Perarivalan is not under investigation, a decision on his release could be in the offing.
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