The last co-conspirators jailed for the 1991 assassination of India’s former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi have been released from prison, a day after the country’s Supreme Court ordered it. Gandhi, 46, was killed by a female suicide bomber at a campaign rally in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu in a plot by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an armed Sri Lankan separatist group. India’s top court allowed the release of the six convicts, citing their “satisfactory conduct” in prison and the fact that they had already served more than 30 years behind bars. Three of the six – Nalini Sriharan, her husband Murugan and Santhan – were released from two prisons in Vellore on Saturday, about 140 kilometers (87 miles) from the regional capital Chennai, according to an AFP reporter on the ground. “It’s a new life with my husband and daughter. I thank the Tamil people for supporting me for more than 30 years. I thank both the state and central governments,” Sriharan told NDTV channel after her release. Local media reported that the others – Robert Pais, Jaikumar and Ravichandran – were released from jails in Chennai and Madurai in the same state. Three of the six convicts released on Saturday had originally been sentenced to death before their sentences were commuted. Gandhi became India’s youngest prime minister after his mother and predecessor Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her bodyguards in 1984. Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi gives a speech on May 16, 1991 [File: AFP] The Gandhi dynasty is at the helm of the Congress Party, which has dominated Indian politics for decades, and Rajiv’s widow Sonia remains the organisation’s most powerful figure, while their son Rahul, 52, is seen as the main challenger of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Last month, the party elected 80-year-old former minister Mallikarjun Kharge as its first non-Gandhi president in 24 years in a bid to reverse its electoral slump. Rajiv’s assassination was seen as a response to his move to send Indian forces to Sri Lanka in 1987 to disarm Tamil rebels. India lost more than 1,000 men against the entrenched rebels before withdrawing its troops. The Congress Party condemned the court order as “totally unacceptable” and “totally wrong”. “It is very unfortunate that the Supreme Court has not acted in the spirit of India in this matter,” the party said, tweeting a statement from its senior official Jairam Ramesh. India has a significant Tamil population of its own, and state governments in Tamil Nadu have repeatedly called for the release of the convicts. Earlier this year, the court freed AG Perarivalan, another convict involved in the murder, who had earlier faced execution, with state chief MK Stalin, a key Congress ally, embracing him after his release. Gandhi’s son has spoken over the years about how he and his sister Priyanka had forgiven their father’s killers. “We were very upset and hurt and for many years we were very angry,” the Indian Express newspaper quoted Rahul as saying in 2018. But they had since forgiven them, he said, “actually, completely.”
