Tamil Nadu to free 4 killers of Rajiv

The government of India's Tamil Nadu state yesterday decided to free four killers of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1991.
    The announcement came only a day after the country's Supreme Court commuted the death sentence of three of them, citing delays in deciding on their mercy petitions against execution.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa's cabinet met in the morning, and made the decision to release the four convicts, including a woman.
On Tuesday, the court had left it to the state government to grant them remission of life sentence.

Three men, Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan, all of whom belonged to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, were convicted in 1998 for Rajiv Gandhi's assassination by a woman.
The woman greeted him with a garland and a bomb strapped to her chest during a rally in Sriperumbudur near Chennai on May 21, 1991. Their mercy petition was sent to the President, the last stage in the process of appeals, in 2000, and was rejected 11 years later.
Earlier, Murugan's wife Nalini Sriharan's death sentence had been commuted on the intervention of Rajiv Gandhi's widow and Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi.
The apex court did not accept the government's view that the convicts did not deserve mercy.
India's Attorney General Goolam Vahanvati said there was “not a word of remorse” in their mercy pleas, and there was “no agony, torture or dehumanising effect due to delays.”
The Indian Supreme Court on January 21 had commuted the death sentences of 15 convicts, announcing that "inordinate and inexplicable" delays in carrying out executions were grounds for reducing their original punishment.