Man jailed in Rajiv Gandhi killing as I hid facts, says ex-CBI officer (Tamil Nadu)

TNN | Nov 15, 2017, 01.44 AM IST 

By Amit Anand Choudhary

NEW DELHI: Almost 18 years after Perarivalan was convicted as a plotter in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, a former CBI officer involved in the investigation has told the Supreme Court that the convict did not know of the plan to kill the former PM. V Thiagarajan also said Perarivalan’s statement about not being aware of the plot was not recorded in his confession,which was heavily relied upon by courts to convict him, as this would have favoured the defendant. Now, Thiagarajan has filed an affidavit in the SC and explained the reason for the “omission”, and virtually supported Perarivalan’s plea for remission of the sentence. “It is humbly stated that accused Perarivalan’s statement that he was totally in the dark as to the purpose for which the batteries were purchased was not recorded by me, because it would be an exculpatory statement and hence the whole purpose of recording the confessional statement would be lost. 

A.G. Perarivalan

Further, I did not deem it fit to record this exculpatory statement because the investigation regarding the bomb was pending at the time of recording the confessional statement,” he said in his affidavit. In an interview with TOI in 2013, Thiagarajan had said Perarivalan, in his confession before him, admitted that he purchased the batteries. “But he said he did not know the batteries he bought would be used to make the bomb. As an investigator, it put me in a dilemma. It wouldn’t have qualified as a confession statement without his admission of being part of the conspiracy. There I omitted apart of his statement and added my interpretation. I regret it,” he said, adding that if he had a chance, he would have corrected the mistake. 

Thiagarajan justified his decision to file the affidavit, saying he had grown concerned at Perarivalan languishing in jail with declining prospects of release. The 1981-batch IPS officer had recorded the confessional statements of Perarivalan alias Arivu in 1991, wherein he was said to have admitted that he had purchased two batteries and handed them to Sivarasan — the leader of the assassination squad — to be used to detonate the bombs to kill the former PM. Perarivalan also stated he was not aware of the purpose for which the batteries were bought and was in the dark about the assassination plan. . “We were not sure at that time about the part played by Perarivalan in the conspiracy but as the investigation progressed there was confirmation about the ignorance of the said accused relating to conspiracy... Hence a mere fact of providing the nine-volt battery in the first week of May 1991 would not make him privy and party to the said conspiracy. 

This internal evidence also makes it clear that the accused was not taken into confidence about the assassination,” Thiagarajan said. The officer’s statements is contradictory to the SC verdict, which had, in 1998, held “we therefore reach the conclusion that A18 (Arivu) was actively involved in the criminal conspiracy to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi”. Perarivalam was about 20 when arrested in mid-1991. He was initially awarded the death penalty, but it was commuted to life imprisonment.

Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/man-jailed-in-rajiv-gandhi-killing-as-i-hid-facts-says-ex-cbi-officer/articleshowprint/61650838.cms (Accessed 23 December 2018)

‘I am going home’ (Tamil Nadu)

Written by Arun Janardhanan |Updated: September 24, 2017 11:12:10 am

What parole, after 27 years of wait, means for Rajiv Gandhi assassination convict A G Perarivalan and his family

Perarivalan's mother at their home. Policemen sat in the verandah through the parole, keeping a watch on visitors (Arun Janardhanan). 

It was around 7.45 pm on August 24 and he was preparing to go to sleep when the key turned and a jail official entered his cell. “Okay, come out,” the official told A G Perarivalan. “You have got parole.” It took several minutes for the balding, middle-aged convict to register the news, the official recalls. Convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, Perarivalan alias Arivu had been arrested in June 1991 at the age of 19. In the 26 years hence, he hadn’t been let out on a single day’s parole or bail. “All he picked up on his way out was a lungi. We suggested he take some extra clothes, apart from the shirt and trousers he was wearing,” says the official. “He replied, ‘Why should I? I am going home’.” When Perarivalan stepped out of Vellore Central Prison around 9 on a humid night, there was no one to receive him. His mother, Arputham Ammal, 66, who has been almost single-handedly fighting for his early release from jail, had said she would believe he was finally coming home when he returned. The announcement of the parole, for Perarivalan to see his ailing father, had come out of the blue.

It is 80 km to their home in Jolarpet, and it took Perarivalan, accompanied by a dozen policemen in two vehicles, 90 minutes to reach. Ammal says she asked him later what he saw along the way. “He did not see anything except a four-lane highway,” she says, her eyes welling up. “When the convoy crossed Ambur and Vaniyambadi, he asked policemen about those towns. But they said they wouldn’t be entering any, just stick to the highway.” At Jolarpet, a full house awaited him, including his parents, his married sisters A G Anbumani (who teaches at Annamalai University) and A G Arulselvi (an engineer with the Rural Development Department), their families, and other relatives and friends. More would keep dropping by all month long. Each registered their names and addresses with the policemen who sat outside the two-room house, in the verandah, keeping a watch.

As per the conditions of his parole, Perarivalan couldn’t give interviews or be photographed, or leave his home. The visitors also had to leave their phones outside. “No selfies,” Ammal says. ‘Selfie’ was a word Perarivalan heard for the first time in jail. It was also in prison that he learnt that Anbumani’s son, whom he saw as a 15-day-old infant in 1992, had become a software engineer. Ammal says the 25-year-old took leave to visit his uncle. “Perarivalan couldn’t stop smiling at the clothes the boy got him.”

The 45-year-old struggled to identify other visitors. Some tried to jog his memory telling him their name, others recounted anecdotes from a shared school trip or an NCC camp. Perarivalan was sentenced to death in May 1999, on the charge of purchasing an 8-volt battery used by the assassins to trigger the belt bomb that killed Rajiv Gandhi. In 2014, his sentence and that of two others, Murugan and Santhan (both Sri Lankans), was commuted to life. Soon after, the Tamil Nadu government ordered the release of all seven convicts in the case, but the Centre went to the Supreme Court to stop this. The matter stands there.

Perarivalan in 2015, when he was taken to Chennai for treatment. (File)

Perarivalan continues to plead that he didn’t know about the main conspiracy. Says Ammal, “All these visitors… nobody here believes he is a murderer. Even after all these years in prison, he tells me he is innocent. That is why I am still fighting for him.” Their house hasn’t changed much in these nearly three decades — the family lives on his father’s pension — but the world outside has sped on, even in the village. Perarivalan spent most of his day on the house’s terrace taking it all in. Their home is located on the foothills of the scenic Yelagiri hills, and Perarivalan remarked how what used to be a vacant plot nearby had a concrete house on it now, and that all around were multi-storey structures. “He lamented that his favourite creche teacher, Babyamma, was no more. He couldn’t even spot where her house used to be down the street,” Ammal says.

His biggest source of wonder were the two cellphone towers opposite their house, sheltering dozens of monkeys. In prison, Perarivalan doesn’t have access to TV, except for rare film screenings, but can receive newspapers, occasional visitors, and is allowed one phone call of nine minutes every six days. Perarivalan told friends about a visit to Chennai in 2015, where he was taken for treatment for back pain, urinary problems and hypertension. He then realised a lot had changed — he could identify only two buildings, Ripon Building and the Chennai Central station. He was struck by the roads, the people busy with cellphones, and especially “the children talking like adults”.

But the biggest blow was seeing the change in his father Njanasekharan, who once taught Tamil at the Jolarpet government school, wrote Tamil poems under the pen name Kuyildasan, and was known as a scary drill master. The 75-year-old looks like a frail man in his 90s now, and suffers from hypertension, bronchial asthma, acute diabetes and neurological issues. Njanasekharan says Perarivalan carried him up to the terrace during his days home. There, as the son and father together lay in the sun, on the advice of doctors, Njanasekharan says his heart would break. “Arivu was the school topper, the best NCC cadet, he won many awards. See his fate now,” he says.

Ammal constantly fretted about how their small house would accommodate all the visitors. But she fretted about something even more. “I am too old and was too nervous to prepare a feast for my Arivu when he came home at such short notice. So I made only dosa,” she says. Later, everyone coming along got him delicacies he liked. A group of friends sent over boxes full of fish products and crabs from Chennai. “Fish curry is his favourite, and he hadn’t tasted it after 1991 as Tamil Nadu prisons don’t serve fish,” says a stoic Ammal. Perarivalan told one of the visitors, James Kurian, a senior professor of philosophy at the Madras Christian College, that it would be forgotten smells, like that of fish, that he would carry back to prison. Kurian remembers Perarivalan sniffing appreciatively one day as firewood smoke wafted to the terrace where they sat, from a kitchen nearby.

“He said his senses had started diminishing from years of seeing nothing but walls. He talked about obsessively counting the bricks, estimating the size of the door, the bolts. He remembered exactly the 6×9 feet cell he spent 11 years of his initial prison term in, in solitary confinement.” The worst years though have been the last three years, Kurian adds, after Perarivalan’s death sentence was commuted to life. With hopes of a release rising, he has been fighting anxiety. Perarivalan jokes that this is why he has lost his hair. Murugan and Santhan, the other two convicts whose death sentence was commuted, are reportedly suffering from depression. Recently, Murugan sought mercy killing.

Perarivalan fears some changes in him may be irreparable. Kurian says having lived alone all these years, he gets anxious amidst crowds now. Children and their frankness trouble him even more, and he couldn’t believe how much his sister Arulselvi’s daughters wanted to see him. Among the visitors was another child, the nine-year-old son of a schoolmate. Perarivalan was very embarrassed as he couldn’t place the friend. To lessen the embarrassment, he asked the boy his name. When the boy said ‘Perarivalan’, he was stunned. Ammal, crying every such time, finally sought relief in musician Ilayaraja. When he was a young boy, Perarivalan would sing Ilayaraja songs with his mother. Some friends who have been helping Ammal in Perarivalan’s case, including aspiring filmmakers and cinematographers, brought along a keyboard, and the mother and son sang together again.

The first song Perarivalan sang was Ponna Pola Aatha, about “a mother pure as gold” giving birth, and getting “only sorrow in return”. Ammal now lives on fresh hope. Plucking jasmine flowers to make a garland for Arulselvi’s daughter, she says, “I met CM Edappadi K Palaniswami. He asked me why I had wasted a day to come see him when my son was home. I said I just wanted to thank him, and prayed to him to let Arivu go. He said hopefully soon, if the Centre permits.” Kurian says this time the promise must be kept. He repeats Perarivalan’s words — “Even if the entire world is brought into a cell, it is still a prison.”

Arputhammal, mother of A.G. Perarivalan. Photo: S. Vijay Kumar

Ammal recalls others. “A friend from Sathyamangalam got for him three country chickens to eat. We cooked one. Arivu joked ‘one among them was sentenced to death, and two others were commuted to life and later pardoned’. Now they roam around the house freely.”

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/a-g-perarivalan-rajiv-gandhi-assassination-convict-4858177/ (Accessed 23 December 2018)

Tamil Nadu can remit Rajiv Gandhi killers' sentence only after Centre's nod

Monday, 17 November 2014 - 7:45am IST | Place: New Delhi | Agency: dna

Prabhati Nayak Mishra 

Supporting the Centre, which had approached the supreme court against the Tamil Nadu government's move to release seven convicts after granting them remission in former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case, the Madhya Pradesh government told the apex court that the state government needs to consult the Centre when granting remission to convicts in cases probed by CBI. However, the state made its stand clear that consultation does not mean 'concurrence.'

Filing an affidavit, MP government told the top court that the Parliament has made it very clear that "the state government should seek mere opinion or advice of the Centre, if the offence has been investigated by the Delhi special police establishment or by any other agency empowered to make an investigation into an offence under any Central Act…" The CBI was created by the Centre under the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act. 

It also said: "The offence involves misappropriation or destruction of or damage to any property belonging to the Central government or was committed by a person in the service of the Central government while acting or purporting to act while discharging of his official duty."

In February, this year, the then Jayalaithaa government in Tamil Nadu had decided to grant remission to all seven convicts, including three, whose death penalty was commuted by the supreme court on grounds of delay in execution, and had given three days time to the Centre to respond to the state's decision.

Tamil Nadu's move followed the supreme court's February 18 verdict commuting the death sentences of AG Perarivalan alias Arivu, Sriharan alias Murugan and T Suthentiraraja alias Santhan on grounds of delay in execution. Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan were awarded the death penalty in 2001 over the killing of former PM Rajiv Gandhi, who was died in a suicide bombing on May 21, 1991, at a political rally in Tamil Nadu.

Four others were given life terms in the same case. They are Sriharan's wife Nalini, B Robert Payas, S Jayakumar and P Ravichandran. Tamil Nadu claims that the state has the power to grant remission under the CrPc provision. The Centre, which was then led by the UPA government, challenged the state government's order. Keeping aside political differences, the NDA government also on Sunday maintained the UPA regime's stand in court. Tamil Nadu says that the state has powers to release the convicts. The Centre demurred, arguing that the convicts could not be released without its nod as the CBI had probed the case.

Case complications

In its referral order in April, the bench framed the issues which are whetherlife term, when commuted from death penalty, meant imprisonment for the rest of life, which could not be remitted by the appropriate government after the convicts spend a minimum 14 years in jail. The question is also that if the president grants or rejects the commutation of death penalty, could the states remit the life sentences after the prescribed minimum period. Also, there is a complication in deciding Which government, the state or Centre, has the power to remit sentences of convicts in the Rajiv assassination case.

Source: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-tamil-nadu-can-remit-rajiv-gandhi-killers-sentence-only-after-centre-s-nod-2035826 [last accessed 06.02.2015]

Indian Supreme Court refuses to release 7 assassins of former PM Rajiv Gandhi

Source:Xinhua Published: 2014-4-25 16:16:12

India's Supreme Court Friday refused to release seven assassins of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi from prison, and referred the case to a five-judge Constitution Bench.

A bench, headed by Chief Justice P. Sathasivam, also framed seven questions to be addressed by the Constitution Bench, including whether after commutation of the death sentence into life in jail, they can be released, and whether the central government or the Tamil Nadu government can do so.

The seven assassins are currently lodged in a jail in the southern state of Tamil Nadu and each has spent more than 20 years in prison.

In February, the Supreme Court had commuted the death sentences of three of the convicts -- Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan -- who were on death row, citing an inordinate delay in disposing of their mercy petitions by the Indian president.

The other four assassins in the case have been serving life imprisonment.

After the apex court ruling, Tamil Nadu's Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa had said all the seven would be released, compelling the central government to challenge the order.

"The release of the killers of a former prime minister of India and our great leader, as well as several other innocent Indians, would be contrary to all principles of justice," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said in response to Jayalalithaa's announcement.

Rajiv Gandhi, who was India's prime minister from 1984 to 1989, was killed by Dhanu, a Sri Lankan suicide bomber from the now- defunct Tamil Tigers, during an election rally at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu on May 21, 1991.

Some 26 people were convicted in the case in 1998 by a special court which sentenced all of them to death. But, in 1999, the Supreme Court confirmed the death sentences of four -- Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan and Nalini.

However, Nalini's death sentence was commuted to life in jail, following the intervention of Rajiv Gandhi's widow and ruling Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, as she gave birth to a girl in jail.

Source: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/856820.shtml#.U2PuGfmSwrU [accessed on 2nd May 2014]]

Don't Politicise Rajiv Murder Case Verdict: Convict's Mother

By PTI - CHENNAI Published: 20th April 2014 07:17 PM

Last Updated: 20th April 2014 07:17 PM

The mother of one of the seven life convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, whose death sentence was commuted to life by the Supreme Court, today appealed to political parties and leaders not to politicise the issue relating to the verdict on their release. The comments of Arputhammal, mother of A G Perarivalan, come a day after DMK chief M Karunanidhi said that Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam's indication that verdict on a petition to release of all seven lifers would be given in a week has led to fears of a "political fallout" in Tamil Nadu ahead of April 24 Lok Sabha polls.

"With polling scheduled on April 24, Justice Sathasivam saying that an important verdict will be pronounced before his retirement date of April 25 has led to fears among many if it will lead to a political fallout and created a big debate among advocates," Karunanidhi had said. Talking to reporters here, Arputhammal said, "All I request is not to politicise the issue. We are hoping for a good verdict from Supreme Court later this week. What we fear is that due to such comments, it may get delayed." She has written a letter to Karunanidhi requesting him to refrain from making any comments on the case as the verdict was expected to come later this week.

"As we are expecting the release of my son who is serving jail term for 23 years, we fear due to your comments, it may get delayed further. I humbly request you not to make such political statements," she said in the letter. On February 20, the apex court stayed the state government's order on the release of the convicts, saying there have been procedural lapses on the part of the state. Besides Perarivalan, Santhan and Murugan, the husband of Nalini, earned a major reprieve from Supreme Court which spared them from the gallows. The Tamil Nadu government subsequently decided to set free all the seven convicts in the case. 

Source: http://www.newindianexpress.com/elections/news/Dont-Politicise-Rajiv-Murder-Case-Verdict-Convicts-Mother/2014/04/20/article2179574.ece [accessed on 24 April 2014]

Former Indian PM Gandhi's killers to hang

NEW DELHI — India's president has rejected mercy pleas from three men convicted of the 1991 assassination of then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, paving the way for their execution, an official told AFP on Thursday.

The appeal, sent to President Pratibha Patil by the men -- Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan, all known by single names -- was their last hope of escaping the hangman's noose.

All three belonged to Sri Lanka's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) militant group, which was accused of plotting the May 21, 1991 murder of Gandhi by a female suicide bomber.

Gandhi had become India's youngest ever prime minister after his mother, former premier Indira Gandhi, was assassinated in October 1984, and ruled until losing an election five years later.

The shredded clothes and the shoes he was wearing when he was killed while on an election tour in the southern of the country 20 years ago remain on display in a museum in the Indian capital.

"The rejection (of the clemency petitions) happened last week after the president returned from a foreign tour," presidential spokeswoman Archana Datta told AFP.

Although the Supreme Court upheld the original death penalty verdict for the three convicts it later commuted the capital punishment to life in prison for Nalini Sriharan, an Indian Tamil woman who was also convicted.

The three men had sought a presidential pardon after the top court's verdict.

The LTTE, wiped out by Sri Lankan forces in 2009 following a bloody offensive by government troops on the island, always denied its hand in Gandhi's assassination.

But the militant group's now-slain leader Velupillai Prabhakaran went on to honour the assassin's father as a "great person who contributed to the Tamil cause."

Gandhi's killing was seen at home as retaliation for a 1987 Indian government pact with the Sri Lankan government to disarm the guerrillas, who had been trained and armed by New Delhi in the early 1980s.

After that pact, the LTTE fought Indian troops deployed to the island by Rajiv Gandhi's government to supervise the accord. India withdrew its troops after 32 months in which it lost 1,200 soldiers at the hands of the rebels.

Ten Indians and nine Sri Lankans sentenced to death by a lower court for their involvement in Rajiv Gandhi's assassination were freed after they were acquitted by the Supreme Court in 1999.

The last execution in India was in 2004 when a 41-year-old former security guard was hanged for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Kolkata city.

An anti-death penalty lobby group condemned the rejection of the clemency petition.

"It has been well established that capital punishment does not help to reform society," said Kirity Roy of the privately-run South Asia Network Against Torture and Impunity.

"If India wants to portray itself as a civilised nation and aspires to fulfil its obligations to international norms then it must abolish the practice," Roy told AFP by telephone from Kolkata.

"There were 12 rapes almost immediately after the guard's hanging and so it proves the death sentence is not a deterrent," argued Roy, urging President Patil to re-think her decision.

In May, Patil rejected a mercy petition from a murderer in the northeastern state of Assam, leaving the state scrabbling to find a hangman.

Many of the small number of known hangmen nationwide have either died or retired in recent years.

By Pratap Chakravarty (AFP)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jE08l64ks3CInW-Ik6dnaxgcePuA?docId=CNG.aa7674c639a5e9ad67258cf714f6c17d.2f1