No clemency yet for Rajiv Gandhi’s assassins

The chief minister of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu said she could not play any official role in stopping the death sentence from being carried out on the three assassins of Rajiv Gandhi, reports the Times of India.

The three assailants, Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan, all members of the Sri Lanka-based Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, are scheduled to be hanged on September 9. Rajiv was killed in Tamil Nadu on May 21, 1991. 

Chief Minister Jayalalithaa's statement followed the rejection of the assassins' plea for mercy by Indian President Pratibha Patil, the constitutional authority empowered with the ability to pardon the condemned. Jayalalithaa issued the statement in response to calls made by various political parties in Tamil Nadu, the paper said.

Haritha, the 19-year-old daughter of Murugan and Nalini, another person involved in the case whose death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, has also appealed to Jayalalithaa and Sonia Gandhi to save her father's life, the paper said. 

Jayalalithaa said that only the President of India has the powers to give clemency to a murder accused. The chief minister of a state does not have such powers, she clarified.  

Rajiv Gandhi, who took office in 1984 after his mother, Indira, was assassinated, was killed in retaliation for his decision to send Indian troops to assist Sri Lanka in fighting the Tamil Tigers in 1987.