The Union government on Thursday filed a review petition in the Supreme Court against its November 11 order allowing the release of six convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
All the six convicts in the case were released last week from prison in Tamil Nadu. The top court said its decision was based on the prisoners’ good behaviour and the release in May of AG Perarivalan, another person convicted in the case, saying that he was 19 years old at the time of arrest and had been jailed for more than 30 years in solitary confinement.
The Union government has contended that the release of the convicts was cleared without it being given an adequate hearing. It has led to an “admitted and glaring breach of principles of natural justice and has, in fact, resulted into miscarriage of justice,” Union said.
“In such a sensitive matter, the assistance of Union of India was of paramount importance as the matter has huge repercussions on the public order, peace, tranquillity and criminal justice system of the country,” the government said.
The Narendra Modi government further said that given four of the six convicts were Sri Lankan and convicted of being terrorists “for the gruesome offence of assassinating the former Prime Minister of the country”, granting them remission was “a matter which has international ramifications and therefore falls squarely within the sovereign powers of the Union of India.”
