NEW DELHI, March 27: The Supreme Court today stayed execution of the death sentence awarded by a designated court in Chennai to all the 26 accused in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991.The interim order was passed by a three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice MM Punchhi, Justice K Venkatswamy and Justice BN Kirpal while admitting appeals against the impugned January 28 judgement of the Chennai court.The judges directed that the original records - including several thousand pages of witness statements - in Tamil be translated into English. The court requested the Madras High Court to arrange for the translation by employing about 100 people from among old and retired court staff.The translations should be certified by a senior HC judicial official and should be completed within two months so that the hearing on the appeal starts immediately thereafter, the court said.Designated judge V Navaneethan had convicted and sentenced to death S Nalini and 25 others, accused under Section120-D and other relevant provisions of the IPC: Explosive Substances Act, Arms Act, Passport Act, Foreigners Act, Wireless and Telegraph Act and TADA for conspiring to kill the former Prime Minister.The accused, in their 90-page SLP, filed through counsel KV Vijaykumar on February 24, have argued that the court erred in:* Failing to note that there was no evidence where the belt bomb was prepared and how it was brought to India.* Holding that mere working for the LTTE movement was sufficient to draw inference that the accused had the knowledge of the conspiracy.* Holding that mere association with the other accused was sufficient to draw inference that even the accused had a common intention and were aware of the main conspiracy.* Relying upon the confessional statements of the accused under Section 15 of TADA.According to Nalini, who is alleged to have harboured Subha and human-bomb Dhasnu till March 7, 1991, except Sivarasan, Shubha and Dhanu, nobody was aware of their intention toassassinate Rajiv Gandhi.``Therefore it ought to have been inferred by the court that the accused were not aware of the intention or conspiracy and that in the absence of this they cannot be connected with the offence of conspiracy in the assassination case,'' she said.Nalini further submitted that she had been told that Dhanu was going to garland former Prime Minister VP Singh and that she needed her (Nalini's) assistance. And it was on this pretext, that she was taken to Sriperumbudur without any knowledge of the assassination conspiracy, she said.Another accused, Sriharan, cited by the prosecution as being a hardcore LTTE militant, contended that there was no evidence to prove he had any knowledge of the conspiracy though he was associated with Sivarasan.Besides Nalini and Sriharan, the other accused sentenced to death in the case and who have come in appeal before the apex court are Shankar, D Vijayanandan, Sivaruben, S Kanagasabapathy, S Chandralekha, B Robert Payas, S Jayakumar, J Shanthi, SVijayan, V Selvalaxmi, S Bhaskaran, S Shanmughavadivelu, P Ravichandran, M Suseendran, G Perarivalan, S Irumborai, S Bhagyanathan, S Padma, A Sundaram, K Dhanasekaran, N Rajasuriya, T Vigneswaran and J Ranganath.
