Couple convicted in Rajiv assassination case ends fast

Nalini and Murugan, convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, today ended their fast after they got word from a relative in Colombo that their daughter Arithra, presently living with her grandmother in Sri Lanka, would be granted a student visa to pursue further studies in Tamil Nadu.

Arithra is likely to fly to Chennai in a couple of days. On receiving news that the Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka was likely to grant a student visa for their daughter, Nalini and husband Murugan, lodged in the high security Vellore prison, ended their fast this evening, prison sources said. They had begun their fast in prison on June 14. Arithra (15) presently lives near trouble-torn Trincomalee.

The girl was born in a prison in Poonamalee in suburban Chennai in 1991 even as her parents were facing trial for conspiring to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi. Arithra had visited her parents for the first time in nine years in January 2006. Her father Murugan had then gone on an indefinite fast for a visa from the Indian Embassy to visit them in the Vellore prison. Murugan has been sentenced to death. Nalini is serving life-term in the women’s section of the Vellore prison.

The two had fallen in love and secretly married even while they were on the run, fleeing capture soon after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.