May 25 2017 : The Times of India (Chennai)
Rajiv case convict seeks to globalise issue, writes to
UN
A Subramani
|
Chennai:
|
Seeking to internationalise denial of release from prison, India's longest serving woman prisoner Nalini Sriharan, who is doing her life imprisonment in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, has written to the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Geneva, Switzerland. She has been in jail since 1991.“I suffer discriminatory treatment at the hands of the Government of India, and the government of Tamil Nadu,“ Nalini said, adding that she became eligible to be considered for release in 2001. She now wants the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCR) to `impress upon the government of India to exercise its powers under Article 72,' and release her from prison.
When Gopal Vinayak Godse, conspirator in the Mahatma Gandhi assassination case, could be released from prison in 1965, why could she not be released, that too after 26 years in jail, Nalini asked. “I have not been considered for early release from prison only on political grounds, not on legal grounds.
After a human bomb killed former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991, 26 people, including Nalini, were sentenced to death by a special court. The Supreme Court, however, limited death term to Nalini, her husband Sriharan, Santhan and Perarivalan. On April 24, 2000, the Tamil Nadu governor commuted her death sentence to imprisonment for life.
Like other states, Tamil Nadu used to release life convicts after specified periods of incarceration if they exhibited good conduct. The last such release came in 2008, when the DMK government released 2,200 life convicts who had completed minimum of seven years in jail. Citing this, and pointing out that her case was not at all considered, Nalini said: “I have been denied the benefit of early release from prison, which is available to all the life convicts in the country , only on the ground that I was convicted in the case of assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, a former prime minister of India.“
When Gopal Vinayak Godse, conspirator in the Mahatma Gandhi assassination case, could be released from prison in 1965, why could she not be released, that too after 26 years in jail, Nalini asked. “I have not been considered for early release from prison only on political grounds, not on legal grounds.
After a human bomb killed former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991, 26 people, including Nalini, were sentenced to death by a special court. The Supreme Court, however, limited death term to Nalini, her husband Sriharan, Santhan and Perarivalan. On April 24, 2000, the Tamil Nadu governor commuted her death sentence to imprisonment for life.
Like other states, Tamil Nadu used to release life convicts after specified periods of incarceration if they exhibited good conduct. The last such release came in 2008, when the DMK government released 2,200 life convicts who had completed minimum of seven years in jail. Citing this, and pointing out that her case was not at all considered, Nalini said: “I have been denied the benefit of early release from prison, which is available to all the life convicts in the country , only on the ground that I was convicted in the case of assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, a former prime minister of India.“
No comments:
Post a Comment