The Centre on Thursday told the Supreme Court that the Tamil Nadu governor would take a decision within the next three-four days on the premature release of seven assassins of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Solicitor-general Tushar Mehta made the announcement before a bench of Justices L. Nageswara Rao, Abdul Nazeer and Indu Malhotra, following which the court adjourned the matter for four weeks. The court was hearing a petition filed by A.G. Perarivalan, one of the convicts, seeking his release from jail in view of a recommendation by the Tamil Nadu government in 2018.

Mehta told the court that he had instructions to say that the governor would take a decision within three-four days.

Besides Perarivalan, the other life convicts are Nalini, Murugan, Santhan, Jayakumar, Ravichandran and Robert Pyas.

The Tamil Nadu cabinet had passed a resolution in September 2018 to release the convicts and had forwarded it to governor Banwarilal Purohit. The recommendation is pending for over two years.

The Centre has not accepted the Tamil Nadu government’s recommendation for the release of the convicts and challenged it in the Supreme Court.

Rajiv was assassinated by suicide bombers of the LTTE at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu in 1991.

In his petition, Perarivalan has said that he was accused of buying the belt bomb battery used to assassinate Rajiv, but the allegation had not been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
During a hearing last November, the judges, who examined the report filed on behalf of the CBI in connection with the case, expressed dissatisfaction, saying nothing new had been filed on the belt bomb and ordering a fresh report.

During that hearing, the court had questioned the governor’s delay in deciding on the release.

Perarivalan has been in prison for nearly 30 years .His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court as the President had earlier taken nearly 12 years to reject the clemency petitions.

During the November 3 hearing, Justice Rao, heading the three-judge bench, had told senior advocate Gopal Sankarnarayan appearing for Perarivalan: “We don’t want to exercise our jurisdiction, but we are not happy with how this recommendation has been pending for two years. Tell us what the law and cases are which can allow us to do it (pass a direction). We can hear this after vacation.”