Nalini Sriharan, the 52-year-old life convict in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, on Thursday came out on ordinary parole of 30 days to make arrangements for her daughter’s wedding. She left Vellore Central prison, 140 km from Chennai, around 10 am with police personnel and was escorted to Rangapuram in Sathuvachari, near Vellore, where her family has hired a house for her to stay for a month. Nalini had requested for six months’ parole for her daughter’s wedding, and argued in person before the judges in Chennai. On July 5, she was granted one month of ordinary parole by the Madras High Court. Explained | For the first time in 28 yrs, Rajiv case convict Nalini gets regular parole. What now? She was arrested in June 1991, hardly a month after assassination of the former Prime Minister, along with her husband Sriharan alias Murugan, a Sri Lankan national. She was pregnant during the arrest and delivered the baby while in judicial custody. The Madras High Court had granted Nalini parole earlier this month to attend her daughter’s wedding. Read: pic.twitter.com/1A73wxOYc9 — The Indian Express (@IndianExpress) July 25, 2019 While this is her first ordinary parole in her 28-year-long incarceration, she had been allowed two emergency paroles — to attend her brother’s wedding and after her father’s death in 2016. The longest serving woman prisoner in the country, Nalini will have the protection of a dozen police personnel till August 25, when she is supposed to return to prison. Parole conditions specify that she should not meet media personnel, politicians and avoid public statements. She has also been asked to report at Sathuvachari police station on a daily basis. Nalini was welcomed by her mother Padmavathi with traditional rituals at the place of stay in Vellore town. Padmavathi, who worked as a nurse in a city hospital, and her younger son Bhagyanathan were among those who were sentenced to death in 1998 along with Nalini and 24 others by a TADA special court. Later, in 1999, the Supreme Court released most of them, including Padmavathi and Bhagyanathan, while upholding the death sentence of four, including Nalini, and life sentence of three others. Murugan’s death sentence was commuted to life by the Supreme Court in 2014 along with three others. His relatives, who live in Europe as Tamil refugees, are expected to reach Chennai ahead of the wedding preparations. Nalini’s daughter Harithra, who spent the first four years in jail with her mother, studied for three years in Coimbatore. Later she was taken to Sri Lanka by Murugan’s relatives and migrated to UK at the peak of the Sri Lankan war.
