Nalini Sriharan, one of the seven convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assasination case, has moved the Madras High Court seeking bail, after another convict AG Perarivalan was granted bail after over 30 years. The sub-application for the bail was moved on Monday, March 21, along with her writ petition from 2020 seeking bail with immediate effect. At the time, she had urged the court not to wait for the Governor to accord his consent to a 2018 recommendation of the Tamil Nadu government to release all the convicts in the case.
Nalini, in the sub-petition filed before the Madras High Court, contended that the Supreme Court had granted bail to Perarivalan citing that he had spent more than three decades in prison. In her petition, she added that she also spent more than three decades in prison and so is entitled to get bail. Nalini, along with four others — her husband Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan — were awarded death sentences while the other three were sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. In 2014, the Supreme Court commuted the death sentences of the four convicts, including Perarivalan, to life citing delays in deciding on their mercy pleas.
On assuming office in May 2021, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin had requested President Ram Nath Kovind to remit the life sentence of the seven convicts in the case and to direct their immediate release.
On March 9, AG Perarivalan was granted bail by the Supreme Court, despite severe opposition from Assistant Solicitor General KM Nataraj. "Taking into account the fact that the applicant has spent over 30 years in prison, we are of the considered view that he is entitled to be released on bail, in spite of the vehement opposition by the Union government,” a bench of Justice L Nageshwar Rao observed while granting him bail.