The Supreme Court on Friday is likely to deliver a verdict on the petition by the Centre challenging Tamil Nadu government’s decision to release all seven life convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
The petition was pending before the court and arguments had been completed.
On February 20, a bench of Chief Justice P Sathasivam, Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Shiva Kirti Singh stayed the state government’s order, citing procedural lapses on the part of the State.
Notably, today’s verdict will be delivered on the last working day for the outgoing Chief Justice of India, P Sathasivam.
The Centre had filed a petition challenging the State’s authority in ordering the release of all seven convicts, a day after the Supreme Court rejected its appeal against the commutation of death sentence to three convicts in the case — V Sriharan, alias Murugan, AG Perarivalan, alias Arivu, and T Suthendraraja, alias Santhan.
The bench had on February 18 commuted the death sentence of the three conspirators to life imprisonment, citing its January 21 judgement, which held that inordinate, unexplained and unreasonable delay in deciding the mercy petition of death row convicts was a ground for commutation of death to life imprisonment. The Tamil Nadu government subsequently decided to set free all the seven convicts in the case.
Besides Perarivalan, Santhan and Murugan, the other four convicts are Nalini, Robert Pyas, Jayakumar and Ravichandran.
In 1998, all the 26 accused in the case were sentenced to death by a special trial court.
In 1999, the Supreme Court confirmed the death sentences of four – Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan and Nalini – while the capital punishment to the others was reduced to varying terms of imprisonment.