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India’s top court frees Rajiv Gandhi’s killer

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The Supreme Court of India has ordered the release of one of the murderers of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

AG Perarivalan spent approximately 30 years in prison.

He was sentenced to death in 1998, however his sentence was later reduced.

Perarivalan was convicted of getting batteries for the bomb that killed Gandhi when he was 19 years old.

Gandhi was slain while speaking at an electoral rally in Tamil Nadu by a female suicide bomber.

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Gandhi’s assassination was largely interpreted as punishment for sending Indian peacekeepers to Sri Lanka when he was prime minister in 1987.

Perarivalan was a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Sri Lankan separatist group fighting for a Tamil state.

Sri Lankan forces finally crushed the insurgents in 2009.

Invoking a clause of the Indian Constitution that allows it extraordinary powers “for doing complete justice in any matter.”

A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court released Perarivalan, one of the seven convicts in the case, on Wednesday.

Governments in Tamil Nadu had requested Perarivalan’s and the other convicts’ release for years.

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The execution penalty of Nalini, a female convict in the case, was mitigated by the state governor in 2000.

While, the death sentences of all the others were commuted by the Supreme Court in 2014 due to an 11-year delay in deciding their mercy pleas.

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