New Delhi: The Supreme Court Wednesday ordered the release of A G Perarivalan, one of the life convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
A bench headed by Justice L Nageswara Rao invoked its extraordinary power under Article 142 to grant relief to Perarivalan.
Perarivalan, who was 19 years old at the time of Gandhi’s killing in 1991, was accused of buying the two 9-volt batteries used in the bomb to assassinate the former prime minister. He was sentenced to death by a TADA court in 1998. The Supreme Court upheld the sentence the next year but commuted it to life imprisonment in 2014. The top court had granted him bail in March this year.
In 2018, Perarivalan approached the top Court aggrieved by the delay in his release despite a recommendation given by the Tamil Nadu government to remit his sentence.
In March this year, the top court had granted him bail.
Gandhi was assassinated on the night of May 21, 1991 at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu by a woman suicide bomber, identified as Dhanu, at a poll rally.
