Nalini Sriharan, serving life sentence for the 1991 assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, will approach the Supreme Court against the Tamil Nadu government’s decision to reject her appeal for release from prison, her lawyer said Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters in
The lawer met Nalini in the
On Monday, Tamil Nadu Advocate General P.S. Raman submitted to the Madras High Court the government decision.
The board, headed by the
This is the second time after 2008 that a Prison Advisory Board has turned down Nalini’s plea for freedom.
Congress leaders have opposed the release of Nalini and others convicted for the killing of Gandhi at an election rally at Sriperumbudur near here May 21, 1991.
Gandhi was blown up when a young woman suicide bomber from the LTTE detonated explosives strapped on her body while pretending to touch his feet at the rally.
According to investigators, Nalini was part of the ‘killer team’ that wanted to kill Gandhi for sending the Indian Army to
Originally, Nalini was convicted on 16 counts of murder and awarded death penalty. Later, at the intervention of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the slain Gandhi’s widow, this was commuted to life imprisonment.
In September last year, Nalini filed a petition in the Madras High Court asking the Tamil Nadu government to convene the advisory board to consider her case for release from jail.
In her petition, she said that she was entitled for release in 2005 itself as she had completed 14 years in jail.
After her arrest, Nalini had married LTTE activist known by his nom de guerre Murugan. He is also in prison for the Gandhi killing. They now have a grown up daughter.
In March last year, Priyanka Vadra, daughter of Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, visited Nalini in the prison. Nalini cited the meeting while demanding her release.
IANS
