Chennai: Nalini Sriharan, one of six convicts in the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi who were released a day ago following a Supreme Court ruling, said on Sunday that she had no role in the plot and was jailed because of her acquaintance with the friends of her husband. Asked if she regretted her role in killing others in the bombing, she maintained her innocence. “I have absolutely no role, really. I know I’m doomed. But in my heart and in my conscience… he knows what happened,” Ms Sriharan told NDTV in an interview. He said he was not involved in the plot to kill the prime minister but was charged because he was part of the group that planned it. “They were my husband’s friends. That’s how I got to know them. I’m a very reserved person. I don’t talk to them. I helped when they needed it, like going to shops or theaters or hotels or temples. I went with them. That was it. Other than that, I haven’t personal contact or I don’t know their family, where they belong,” he said. Before her death sentence was commuted in 2001, Ms. Sriharan said, she expected to be executed at any moment and prepared seven times for hanging. “Seven times they took out a black warrant (execution order) waiting for me,” he said. But she remembered her prison meeting with Rajiv Gandhi’s daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra fondly. “He’s a very kind man. He was an angel. And he made me respect myself because … we weren’t treated right in prison,” Ms Sriharan said. “We weren’t even allowed to sit in front of officers. We had to stand and talk. But when she came to meet me, she made me sit next to her. It was a very different experience for me,” she said. Ms. Sriharan said that Ms. Gandhi Vadra asked her about her father’s murder when they met. She was moved and cried too. “She asked me about her father’s murder. She was emotional about her father. She cried too,” she told a news conference. Ms Sriharan also told NDTV about reuniting with her daughter Harithra, a doctor in London, who was born to her in 1992 in prison and then raised outside. In 2019, when she got married, Ms Srihararan was granted parole for a month to attend her. “She has completely forgotten me. I was the one who gave birth to her, but I broke up with her after two years. So after she gave her out, she completely forgot who I am. Now we are trying to recover what happened,” he said. “It’s a very difficult situation for me and for her. We’re mature. We can understand things, but she’s very young. She couldn’t understand what’s happening. That’s why she’s suffering like this. So, it’s very difficult for me daughter,” he added. Ms Sriharan was sentenced to death for her role in the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) suicide bomber during an election rally in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu. The sentence was reduced to life with the intervention of Rajiv Gandhi’s wife Sonia Gandhi. Years later, the Supreme Court commuted the sentences of six more convicted in the case. The decision was welcomed by many in Tamil Nadu, where their imprisonment was a touchy issue as many believe the seven locals who were convicted were part of the plot without knowing its extent.
