It was a reunion like no other.
On Saturday, Tamil Nadu’s longest-serving male prisoner Subramani, 63, walked out of the Vellore Central Prison after serving 28 years and he was received by his wife Vijaya, 60, who herself had served 23 years in the same prison.
In fact, Vijaya was the longest-serving prisoner in the State at the time of her release in 2013.
The couple was jailed in 1990 after a judge sentenced them to life imprisonment on charges of murdering a man in Sulur in Coimbatore.
Their respective families and relatives had disowned them.
Vijaya was lost for words, and with tears rolling down her cheek, she received her husband. A little later, both of them left for Tirupur, the native town of Subramani.
“It is Nalini Sriharan, one of the convicts in the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, who drew my attention to the plight of Vijaya, saying she was the longest-serving woman prisoner. Both were prison mates in Vellore. I filed a habeas corpus petition in the Madras High Court in 2011,” said advocate P. Pugalenthi, who is the director of Prisoners’ Rights Forum.
Jaya took notice
The issue was raised in the Assembly in 2013 by the then DMDK Legislator R.M. Babu Murugavel, who subsequently joined the ruling AIADMK.
“Mr. Pugalenthi briefed me about the details of the case and I raised it during the demand for grants for the Law Department. Amma (Jayalalithaa, the then Chief Minister) took notes of my speech, and two months later, Law Department officials informed me about her release,” recalled Mr. Murugavel, who is now functioning as the spokesperson of the AIADMK.
Following the decision of the government to release her, the prison department submitted a copy of a release order before a division bench comprising Justice S. Rajeswaran and P.N. Prakash in 2013.
Mr. Pugalenthi said he had in fact secured a High Court order in 2015 for the release of Subramani but he couldn’t walk out of the prison due to lack of social support outside. “His wife was staying in a voluntary home for women but no home agreed to accommodate him. Now, he has taken his wife and gone to his native,” he said.
