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Madras HC allows Rajiv case convicts to make video calls to kin
The Madras high court on Thursday allowed a plea to allow life convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, Nalini Sriharan and her husband Murugan to make video calls to their relatives in Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom
The Madras high court on Thursday allowed a plea to allow life convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, Nalini Sriharan and her husband Murugan to make video calls to their relatives in Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom.
A two-judge division bench of justices N Kirubakaran and V M Velumani passed the order. The plea was filed by Sriharan’s mother, S Padma, to allow the couple to make video calls to speak to their kin after Murugan had lost his father in April 2020. They had sought permission to make video calls to his mother and sister in Sri Lanka and London for at least 10 mins daily.
During previous hearings in the case last year, the state and the union government had taken a stance that they should not be permitted to make video calls to a foreign country. The state had opposed it, submitting that it was under the domain of the ministry of external affairs, and there were no provisions in the Tamil Nadu prisons rules for them to make decisions involving foreign countries.
Hence the court had asked the Union external ministry to respond to the issue. The then assistant solicitor general of India G Karthikeyan had argued that the life convicts should not be permitted to make live calls to Sri Lanka as it would hamper the investigations, led by multi-disciplinary monitoring agency (MDMA), into the larger conspiracy of the assassination. The court had refused to accept the submission setting that they were going to make a condolence call.
Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi got assassinated in Sriperumbudur in May 1991, and seven convicts have been serving imprisonment for more than three decades. Chief minister M K Stalin has written to President Ramnath Kovind to remit their sentence and release them, which is a call supported by all regional political parties in Tamil Nadu.
