Rajiv Gandhi Assassination: Convict Nalini Sriharan Granted One Month Parole

Nalini Sriharan, one of the convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case was granted a month's parole on Thursday. The Tamil Nadu Government granted parole to Sriharan on request from her ailing mother.

Padmavathi, Nalini's ailing mother, filed a petition before the Madras High Court, requesting a parole to her daughter due to her frail health. This is not Nalini's first parole since her 1991 arrest. In 2019, she was out on one month and twenty days parole. Nalini Sriharan will be staying with her mother, brother, sister and other relatives in their Vellore house.

“The prisons department in a communication dated December 22 has issued a letter for her (Nalini) to be given 30-days leave by submitting two sureties,” said the family’s counsel V Pugazhendi. “The one-month leave is likely to start from December 25 or 26.”

Sriharan, her mother Padmavathi and her brother were among the twenty-four people who were sentenced to death in 1998 by a TADA court in connection with the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

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But Supreme Court in 1999, only upheld the death sentence of four of the accused, releasing the rest. While Padmavathi and her son were released, Nalini and her husband Murugan were still on death row. In 2001, Sriharan's death sentence was commuted to a life term on grounds of her having a daughter. Her husband's death sentence was commuted to a life term too, in 2014.

Previously, Sriharan has been allowed to be out on two emergency paroles: one for her brother's wedding and another for her father's death but both of them were for a few hours.

Nalini's husband is a Sri Lankan citizen who is lodged at the Vellore prison.  He is granted permission to meet Nalini once in a fortnight.

Rajiv Gandhi assassination

Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in May 1991, by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam suicide bomber during his election rally in Tamil Nadu, Sriperumbudur. The attack left fourteen other people dead. Sriharan is said to be the lone surviving member of the five-people squad that was responsible for the assassination. In 2013, Sriharan said in an interview that she regretted the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.

Sriharan's death sentence was converted into a life term after Sonia Gandhi, wife of the late Indian Prime Minister,  pleaded for clemency on account of Nalini's young daughter who was born in jail.