The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a plea filed by A.G. Perarivalan, convicted in the case of assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, to recall its judgment confirming his guilt in the crime.
The court said it “does not need to interfere with its 1999 verdict upholding conviction.”
Perarivalan alleged that his conviction was garnered by “playing fraud” on the court.
He was 19 years when the CBI arrested him in June 1991 for his involvement in the assassination at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu at the venue of a political rally by a suicide bomber wearing a belt bomb. He was found guilty of purchasing two nine volt batteries for the improvised explosive device (IED) used in the killing.
The court confirmed his death sentence on May 11, 1998 on a death reference. His death penalty was commuted to life sentence by the court in February 2014. Now, in his mid-forties, Perarivalan has spent over 26 years in prison.
