After 33 years, 3 freed Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convicts return to Lanka | India News

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CHENNAI: After a niche of greater than 33 years, the freed convicts within the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case – V Sriharan alias Murugan, Robert Payas and Jayakumar – landed in Colombo on Wednesday morning, and later proceeded to their hometown Jaffna.
On arrival from Chennai at 11am, Sri Lankan immigration officers questioned them for about three hours. The trio spent one other 5 hours with CID police personnel and answered all queries, stated their lawyer P Pugalenthi who accompanied them to Sri Lanka.
“To the accusation by immigration officers that that they had left the island nation illegally in 1991, we defined how a war-like scenario pressured them to flee the island and that there was no time to stick to procedural formalities.
“On their half, CID officers discovered that there have been no instances pending towards any of them in Sri Lanka. They had been, due to this fact, allowed to proceed to Jaffna,” Pugalenthi instructed TOI.
Requested about Sriharan’s plan to get asylum within the UK and reunite along with his daughter there, plus apprehension expressed in Madras excessive courtroom that his life could be in peril if he ever returns to Sri Lanka, Pugalenthi stated the Sri Lankan deputy excessive fee in Chennai gave all of the three solely a traditional passport and never an all-country passport. “Common passport warrants them to return to Sri Lanka after which pursue their visa choices. There was no different manner besides to return to Sri Lanka,” he stated.
The dying of Sri Lankan nationals Krishnamoorthy and T Suthenthiraraja alias Santhan contained in the particular camp for international nationals at central jail in Trichy in a span of two months this yr additionally apprehensive them, Pugalenthi stated, including, “they realised their visa course of could be delayed.”
On being launched from the particular camp on Tuesday night time, the three left for Chennai . Their launch was delayed as officers had been ready for orders from the deputy excessive fee of Sri Lanka in Chennai. Lastly, Foreigners’ Regional Registration Workplace (FRRO) in Chennai carried out the deportation course of.
The three had been lodged on the particular camp hours after they had been launched from the central jail at Puzhal on November 12, 2022, following a Supreme Court docket order.
In 1998, the three had been sentenced to dying by a TADA courtroom, alongside all of the 23 different suspects within the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. Nonetheless, Supreme Court docket confirmed the dying penalty just for 4 folks – Sriharan, his spouse Nalini, Santhan alias T Suthendraraja, and A G Perarivalan. Three others – Robert Payas, Jayakumar and Ravichandran – had been sentenced to imprisonment for all times. In 2000, the dying penalty of Nalini was commuted to life time period on humanitarian grounds. In February 2014, Supreme Court docket commuted the dying penalty of the three others to life imprisonment.
On Nov 11, 2022, Supreme Court docket provided them last reduction by ordering their untimely reduction from jail. Whereas Nalini, Jayakumar and Perarivalan rejoined their households in India, the remaining 4 had been taken to the particular campus in Tiruchi as they’re Sri Lankan nationals. Of the 4, solely Santhan wished to be despatched again to Sri Lanka. He, nevertheless, fell sick and died on Feb 28.



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