Rajiv Gandhi assassination: Apex court expresses unhappiness over pendency of convict’s plea

NEW DELHI (PTI):

The Supreme Court on Tuesday expressed unhappiness over the pendency of plea by a convict seeking pardon in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case for over two years with the Tamil Nadu Governor.

A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao, Hemant Gupta and Ajay Rastogi said, “We don’t want to exercise our jurisdiction at this stage but we are not happy that recommendation made by the government is pending for two years.”

The top court asked advocate Balaji Srinivasan, appearing for Tamil Nadu, why the state government cannot request the Governor to pass an order without any specific order from this court?

Srinavasan said that Governor had sought report of the MDMA.

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The bench then told ASG K M Nataraj, appearing for Centre, whether the state has made any request to send the report of MDMA.

He replied that the larger conspiracy probe is going on and the investigation is spread over various countries like the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka.

The bench told the ASG that the larger conspiracy theory is to find out if any other person, besides those convicted in the matter, is involved in this.

It said that even after almost two decades; the Centre is saying that it is getting a response for Letter Rogatories (letters of request from a court to a foreign court for some judicial assistance) sent to various countries.

Gandhi was assassinated on the night of May 21, 1991 at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu by a woman suicide bomber, identified as Dhanu, at a poll rally.

Fourteen others, including Dhanu herself, were also killed. Gandhi’s assassination was perhaps the first case of suicide bombing, which had claimed the life of a high-profile leader. (PTI)

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