TN Governor gets petition not to release Rajiv Gandhi case convicts

Chennai: Families of those killed along with Rajiv Gandhi met Governor Banwarilal Purohit on Wednesday and petitioned him to put on hold his decision on the state cabinet recommendation for release of the seven convicts in the case. They wanted him to defer decision till the disposal of their plea in the Supreme Court against the state cabinet recommendation. 

“We requested the Governor not to take any decision till our petition in the Supreme Court is disposed off. He has assured he will consider”, said Anasuya Daisy Ernest, one of the two survivors who was part of the delegation to the Raj Bhavan that included families of four killed in the blast. 

She was a 30-year-old sub-inspector heading a team of ten women constables on bundobust duty at the Sriperambudur venue of the Rajiv election rally when the LTTE suicide bomber carried out the heinous murder on the night of May 21, 1991. Charred by the blast and pierced by the bomb’s pellets throughout the body, she somehow fought out of the jaws of death but lost three fingers of her left hand. 

“Why don’t all those crying hoarse for the release of the seven convicts also consider the pain and the trauma we and our families have suffered all these years from that inhuman killing by a foreign terror group? Are we not Tamils as well? Wasn’t Rajiv Gandhi an Indian or did he drop from the sky or migrate into this country from some other land?” asked Ernest, who retired from the state police service this May after attaining superannuation.

“One Superintendent of Police died. He was a young man and would have got his IPS promotion.

His family has been in dire straits. My constable Chandra had died in the blast and her only daughter became mentally unstable after that”, Ernest told DC.

Mahila Congress functionary Samdhani Begum was among those killed in the blast. Her son Abbas was part of the Wednesday delegation and he told the Governor how his childhood was terribly painful as he lost his mother when he was barely eight years old and his father had predeceased her.

 He was forced to drop out of school when he was in class ten. “I am now running a small shop for my survival…it’s a big challenge making ends meet”, Abbas said.

He said enough of humanitarianism had been shown to the convicts as their death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. “Can we get back our dear ones who died in that blast? We sincerely feel that terrorism should not be condoned.” 

In their petition to the Governor, the kin requested the Governor to send a committee to study the sufferings of these 14 innocent victim families. They said they had filed a review petition in the Supreme Court in 2014 (against the TN move to release the convicts) and that the top court had on September 17 (2018) given them three weeks time to submit their detailed plea.