The
Supreme Court today dismissed the plea of S Nalini, undergoing life
imprisonment in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, challenging the
law mandating the Centre's approval for her release and that of six
other convicts. "Sorry, we are not interested," a bench
comprising Chief Justice H L Dattu and justices M B Lokur and A K
Sikri said. Nalini had challenged Section 435(1) of the Criminal
Procedure Code which mandates the state government to consult the
Centre before premature release of a convict if the case was
investigated by the CBI. She has been in jail for the last 23 years
and undergoing life imprisonment after her death sentence was
commuted. She was sentenced to death by the trial court in the case
on January 28, 1998. Nalini's death sentence was commuted to life
term by the Tamil Nadu Governor on April 24, 2000. "Though 2200
life convicts who had put in less than 10 years of imprisonment were
prematurely released by the Tamil Nadu Government during the last
about 15 years, she was excluded from consideration for premature
release only on the ground that her offence was investigated by the
CBI i.e. her case was covered by Section 435(1)(a) CrPC. The said
section is unconstitutional," her petition said. The Centre had
earlier contended that the Tamil Nadu government can't release the
convicts without its approval and had derailed the state government's
decision to release them. After the apex court had commuted the death
sentence of convicts Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan, the Tamil Nadu
government on February 19 had proposed to remit the sentences of all
seven lifers, including the three, and release them.
The
decision of the state government to release the convicts was
challenged by the Centre before the Supreme Court which had stayed
the decision and referred the matter to a Constitution Bench. The
court had on February 20 stayed the decision to release of three
convicts--Murugan, Santhan and Arivu-- whose death sentence was
commuted to life term by it on February 18 in the case, saying there
had been procedural lapses on the part of the state government on the
decision to release them. The apex court later on had also stayed
release of convicts Nalini, Robert Pious, Jayakumar and Ravichandran
in the case. Santhan, Murugan and Arivu are currently lodged in the
Central Prison, Vellore and they are in jail since 1991. The other
four are also undergoing life sentence for their role in Rajiv
Gandhi's assassination on May 21, 1991 in Sriperumbudur.
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