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SC urged to commute death sentence for Rajiv's assassins

The People's Union for Democratic Rights today strongly opposed the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the death penalty for four of the 26 accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

In a statement in New Delhi, PUDR secretary Harish Dhawan urged the court to urgently reconsider its decision and commute the death sentence of the four accused.

The civil rights group said several salient points about the case need to be considered urgently, including that the main accused were dead much before the trial began and the 26 people convicted by the trial court in Madras were secondary and tertiary conspirators.

The assassination of a political figure alone seems to have been enough to immediately put the case into the category of "rarest of rare". This was accepted by the judges as the foremost "special reason" for awarding the death penalty, Dhawan said.

Further, though the apex court acquitted all the accused of the charges under the now-repealed Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, unfair TADA procedures governed the trial, including the admissibility of police confessions and the denial of appeal to the high court.

The PUDR also said the TADA trial court's judgment had made certain references to accused Nalini which showed "disturbing prejudices" of the judge. These included describing her as "a dejected and frustrated person in life" and also as an "over-ambitious lady who wanted to come up in life by buying cars, houses, bungalow".

Urging the apex court to reconsider its verdict, the PUDR cited the acquittal of 19 of the accused and commutation of sentence of three others. "These persons can be released, once their sentences are reduced, only because they have not been killed by the state. However, the death sentence, once imposed, is final and irrevocable," it added.

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