Who was Santhan, Rajiv Gandhi assassination convict who died less than 2 years after his release?

When did he come to India, and how long did he spend in jail?

A Sri Lankan citizen, Santhan was accused No. 2 in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. He was charged for his active association with Sivarasan, considered the mastermind behind the assassination. According to CBI case files, Santhan came to Tamil Nadu with Sivarasan in April 1991. The chargesheet described him as a member of the LTTE’s intelligence wing who was close to Sivarasan. In February 1988, Sivarasan suggested that Santhan continue his studies in what was then Madras (now Chennai), and in February 1990, he secured admission at the Madras Institute of Engineering Technology, where his expenses were met by the LTTE.

On May 21, 1991, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. In 1998, a TADA court sentenced 26 of the 41 accused to death, including 12 who had died in the blast or during the investigation. In May 1999, the Supreme Court freed 19 of them, while upholding the death sentences of Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan, and Nalini, and commuting the death sentences of Payas, Ravichandran, and Jayakumar to life.

Santhan spent over 32 years incarcerated, including a decade in solitary confinement. He was also a death row prisoner for 22 years until the Supreme Court commuted the death sentences of four into life in 2014.

When Santhan, along with six others, were finally released in November 2022, it was the first time he stepped out of the prison complex in 32 years, as he had not had a single parole. The release, however, did not last long.

While three convicts – Perarivalan, Nalini, and Ravichandran – were released, four Sri Lankan nationals – Santhan, Jayakumar, Robert Payas, and Murugan – were sent to a special prison camp for foreigners in Trichy. It was meant as a transit point before their repatriation.

However, as the state government and the Union government dragged their feet on paperwork for their repatriation, all four wrote several petitions stating they were denied basic freedoms under humanitarian grounds. There were also complaints of authorities denying medical help.

Among the four sheltered at Trichy prison, Santhan was the only Sri Lankan national who wanted to return to own country. After a long delay, on Friday, the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) in Chennai issued an order to deport Santhan to Sri Lanka.

Murugan, Payas, and Jayakumar were seeking to go to Europe to join their immediate relatives who migrated there during the war in Sri Lanka.

While Santhan had declined to meet this reporter multiple times since 2012, Perarivalan, who spent nearly three decades in prison with Santhan, recalled him as a man “who lived in his own world”. Santhan never spoke to anyone in prison. Overtly religious, he used to regularly perform puja and rituals at a temple inside Vellore prison. “He would sit in the prison temple for almost the entire day,” said Perarivalan in an earlier interview.

Where is his family now?

Santhan’s family lives in Udupiddy in the Jaffna district in northern Sri Lanka. His father died in 2013 and his mother, Maheshwari, 78, lives with her younger son Sudhakaran. After Santhan left home, the family was displaced in 1995, and returned to their small two-room house only in 2010.

In an extensive conversation with The Indian Express recently, Sudhakaran, who is 16 years younger to his brother, said he met Santhan twice after 1991 – once in 2014 and then in 2017.

According to Sudhakaran, Santhan left home to study in London in 1990. “When he was arrested, he had a ticket to fly to London three days later, which I read in the book of the late Special Investigation Team chief K Raghothaman,” he said.

“Our life was always caught up in trouble. Be it from the LTTE or the Sri Lankan Army; we were victims of the war. After his arrest, he used to write letters for some time, but then we lost touch. Once he said that he reduced communication fearing that it would be trouble for us. There was extreme poverty in the period when he left for London. Not even once did we have food three times a day. I remember how my mother used to skip food for us. After the war ended and we managed an income, my mother continued to skip food for her son in prison,” Sudhakaran said.

The first visitor Santhan had after his arrest in 1991 was Sudhakaran, in 2014. “I was six when he left home in 1990. We waited for him at the visitors’ room at the Vellore Central Prison. The moment he entered the room, I cried. Seeing me, he was surprised. He asked, ‘Thambiyaa?’ (Isn’t it my brother?). I said, ‘aamam’ (yes). He said he wouldn’t have met me if he knew that it was me. He said he wanted to see me only back at home, not in prison. A Q-branch official stood there, consoled me. He told me my Annan (elder brother) was mentally upset. Exchanging a few words, he hurried back. He reminded me that I should inform him in advance next time as he has to do pujas at the temple inside, and that he will finish that early to meet me,” Sudhakaran said.

For Maheshwari, Santhan’s mother, life was all about war, miseries, and concerns about her son trapped in a “lifelong curse”.

“I remember the day he left us. It was Sithirai Parvam (an auspicious day falls in the Tamil month of Chithirai, in April). I was fasting that day. He had puttu (a dish made of ground rice and coconut) and left home. He was helpless. War was brewing. He said he would go to London and take his sister and brother too,” she told The Indian Express after Santhan’s release in 2022.