Indian court commutes death to life in prison for 3 held in Rajiv Gandhi assassination




The attack -- orchestrated by Tamil Tiger rebels in neighboring Sri Lanka -- horrified the nation and virtually ended Indian support for the rebels' in their decades-long fight for an ethnic Tamil homeland. All of the assassination's masterminds, who targeted Gandhi for sending Indian troops to Sri Lanka in 1987, were killed during or after the 1991 attack. Although the troops were sent to oversee a peace accord between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan government, they got embroiled in the war and fought the rebels for months.


Indian national Arivu Perarivalan was found guilty of buying a 9-volt battery used in the bomb, while Sri Lankans Murugan and Santhan -- who use only one name -- acknowledged they were Tamil Tigers rebels but only pawns in a larger game they barely understood.


"This is a landmark judgment," said the men's lawyer, Yug Chaudhry, applauding the court for rejecting the idea that the prisoners should show proof of "the scars of mental suffering" in awaiting their executions for decades.

Human rights activists and lawyers also cheered the court's decision.

A "delay in disposing of mercy petitions of death row convicts amounts to degrading, inhumane treatment. It amounts to torture," rights lawyer Vrinda Grover said.  "In this case also there has been substantial delay."

The Supreme Court last month had agreed that "unexplained delay is grounds for commuting death penalty to life sentence" as it commuted 15 other death sentences.

Amnesty International said Tuesday's decision "shows the judiciary's willingness to uphold standards it set down for the treatment of prisoners on death row."

Hangings are rare in India, with three in the last 18 years, though there are some 400 prisoners on death row in India.

The Vellore Three, as they are now known, were the only convicts left on death row in the case, after 23 others were released or had their sentences commuted to life. The last clemency granted was for Murugan's wife and the mother of his child, Nalini Sriharan, after Gandhi's widow, Sonia, met with her and asked in 1999 that no one be hanged. Sonia Gandhi is now leader of the governing Congress Party and her son, Rahul, is seen as the party's prime ministerial candidate in parliamentary elections that must be held by May.