“Personally, I have said I do not believe in violence. The answer to violence does not lie in more violence. I believe the answer to violence is ahimsa ,” Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra told The Hindu while referring to a possible amnesty for the seven persons convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
Asked to respond to the Centre’s tough stand against the pardon, Ms. Vadra said on Friday, “There are two aspects to this as far as I’m concerned — one is my own personal journey, and the fact that the person who was assassinated was my father. In that, I have made my views very clear previously. As you know, I met Nalini in jail; meeting Nalini was a revelation to me about many feelings and emotions that I had held onto very strongly.”
Ms. Vadra met Nalini, one of the convicts, in jail in March 2008. According to Nalini, in an account reported by this newspaper eight years later, Ms. Vadra told her: “My father was a good person. He was very soft. Why did you do this? Whatever was the reason, it could have been resolved with dialogue.” Immediately after, both Nalini and Ms. Vadra broke into tears.
Nation’s decision
“However, at a political level, it’s a completely different thing. At a political level, he was an ex-Prime Minister, it was a political assassination and an act of terrorism that killed many more people than just him. A nation cannot be expected to react in the same manner as a daughter would react or as a human being would react to something personally,” she added on Friday.
The seven convicts — Nalini, T. Suthendraraja (Santhan), Sriharan (Murugan) who is Nalini’s husband, A.G. Perarivalan (Arivu), Robert Payas, S. Jayakumar alias Jayakumaran, and Ravichandran (Ravi) — have been in jail for over 27 years.
Santhan, Murugan, Payas and Jayakumar are Sri Lankan Tamils. The final decision on the release of the seven prisoners, convicted for the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on May 21,1991, rests with the Tamil Nadu Governor.
After President Ram Nath Kovind rejected the earlier request of the Tamil Nadu government to release the seven prisoners in April 2018, the State Cabinet passed another resolution in September 2018 seeking their release.
The plea to release the convicts was turned down by the President on the advice of the Home Ministry, which said that the assassination was an unparalleled act in the annals of crime committed in the country.
“The brutal act brought the Indian democratic process to a grinding halt inasmuch as the general elections to the Lok Sabha and Assemblies in some States had to be postponed,” the Centre informed the Supreme Court in August 2018.
The Tamil Nadu government decision followed the Supreme Court’s observation that the Governor shall be at liberty to decide on the remission “as deemed fit.” In 2016, late Chief Minister Jayalalithaa had also written to the Centre to release the prisoners.
(With inputs from Vijaita Singh)
