A group of DMK MPs, led by their parliamentary party leader T.R. Baalu, on Friday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here and asked him to recommend to the President, on humanitarian grounds, to commute death sentence of three youths convicted in former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi assassination case to life imprisonment.
They pointed out that Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan have been in jail in Tamil Nadu since 1991. They also sought abolition of capital punishment in the country.
Noting that there were many instances when death penalty had been commuted to life imprisonment, the DMK parliament members referred to May 1 verdict of the Supreme Court commuting the death sentence of convict >Mahendra Nath Das of Assam on the ground that his mercy petition was rejected by the President after 11 years. The delegation said the conviction of Rajiv killers was upheld by the Supreme Court in May 1998. They were suffering imprisonment since their arrest in 1991, they said and pleaded for mercy .
The other MPs in the delegation include T.K.S. Elangovan, Tiruchi Siva and Tamarai Selvan.
