Death Row Inmate No. 13906

Freedom is an abstract idea for many,but once lost it is no longer intangible. So is the case with truth and justice. Truth,believes Perarivalan,condemned to death for his alleged role in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on May 21,1991,was the first casualty in the frenetic hunt after the bomb blast. He wanted,he said,to start from the beginning,from truth.

Arivu,as he is known,was two months short of his 20th birthday when CBI officials from the Special Investigation Team (SIT) came looking for him at his house in Jolarpet,Vellore,around midnight on June 10. The next day,his parents,T Gnanasekaran and K Arputham,started for Chennai where Arivu was based and handed him over to SIT officials at Periyar Thidal,the headquarters of Dravidar Kazhagam,the parent organisation of Dravidian politics. “We all thought this was part of the high-profile investigation in which they wanted to inquire into everyone — followers,supporters and even sympathisers. We thought they wanted some questions answered and I would be let off the next day,” said Arivu. That was a Tuesday,21 years ago.

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Arivu has been at Vellore Central Prison for the last 12 years. This was as close as it could get to home,about 80 km away. Locked inside,this proximity might have been notional for Arivu but not for his mother Arputham. Since the third day of his detention,and over the two decades in which the world’s interest in the fate of the inmates dwindled,Arputham,now 65,has travelled endlessly — to prisons,courts and offices of powerful politicians; to take part in protests organised by sympathetic outfits; to attend meetings against the death penalty; to address the media; and to release the appeal her son wrote to the President of India,which was published as a book,An Appeal from the Death Row. Arputham has been passionate and persevering,and for her son,“the single biggest source of strength”. On Thursdays,she makes the journey to the prison,carrying latest issues of major English and Tamil magazines for him. She returns with a bunch of newspapers which Arivu has marked — reports on the case or the death penalty — for her to cut out and archive.

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We met Arivu on a Tuesday,one of the two days in a week visitors are permitted. Tuesdays are when he meets visitors outside his family,usually Tamil activists and opponents of the death penalty. Every once in a while,there are new faces. He knows they are here to seek out his story,and ask about his future plans — if he is not executed and if he manages to return as a free man. After having answered the questions hundreds of times,there is now a structure to the narrative,arranged chronologically and explained coherently.

Arivu said he hated to be referred to as the “Rajiv killer”. To all who came to meet him,he explained his side of the story in great detail,citing dates,sections and observations from various court judgements. What he wanted was justice,not sympathy.

Though coming low in the list of those accused in the assassination,at number 18,what perhaps implicated him was his education — a diploma in electronics and communication engineering. Among the several people detained in the case,he was among the few who had formal knowledge of electronic equipment. One of the first questions he faced was from senior investigator Radha Vinod Raju (then a DIG,who went on to become the first head of the National Investigation Agency): did he make the bomb?

“Whether [my education was useful or not for me,I will certainly say that it was useful for the investigating bureau to falsely implicate me in this case and push me to the gallows,” he said in his appeal to the President. The tag of bomb-maker stuck,and was given wide circulation by the media,said Arivu. But while all 26 accused were charged under sections 3,4 and 5 of the Explosive Substances Act,1908,the chargesheet did not name him as the bomb-maker. K Ragothaman,the chief investigating officer of the CBI,later admitted that the agency could not solve the mystery as to who made the bomb. Arivu was instead accused of supplying a car battery to power a wireless set and a 9-volt battery used to detonate the belt bomb,among other indictments.

Even sympathisers,though,have pointed out the futility of arguing on the basis of legal points two decades after the incident and 12 years since the Supreme Court reconfirmed the death sentences awarded by a trial court in 1998. But sitting in the visitors’ room,wearing a clean T-shirt and white trousers,Arivu continues to appeal to reason and not emotions.

On days when visitors are not allowed,his life revolves around the prison school and his studies. In the morning,he plays badminton and volleyball with other inmates. “It was debilitating to face the false charges and be awarded capital punishment for crimes I have not committed. But slowly I realised the importance of moving on even while fighting my case. While inside the prison,I completed BCA and MCA,six other certificate courses and am now planning to register for an M Phil,” he said. In his younger days,he had a guitar but did not get the time to learn. He is learning to play it now,and was part of an orchestra that performed at the prison last Christmas.

Arivu also motivates fellow inmates to study and ensure that the time spent behind bars is not wasted; he is one of the teachers responsible for the prison school. Some call him the “education minister”. The interest has perhaps got to do with being the son of government school teacher Gnanasekaran,who is known in the Tamil activist/literature circles by the pseudonym Kuildasan. An ardent follower of ‘Periyar’ EV Ramasamy,the founder of Dravidar Kazhagam,Kuildasan named his only son based on a couplet from the ancient Tamil treatise,Thirukkural. (Arivu means wisdom and Perarivalan means one with exceptional knowledge.) Inside the prison,not everyone follows Arivu’s advice,but they listen to what he is saying. The prison personnel are gentle to him,sometimes even courteous.

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It was only later that we noticed the other inmates in the room. Two of them — one in white shorts and the other clad in a dhoti — looked familiar. They were Sriharan alias Murugan and Santhan,the other accused in the case,who form the trio awaiting death. They await the same future as Arivu but their stories are coloured by the fact that they are Sri Lankan Tamils,foreigners to unsympathetic eyes,and once active members of the LTTE. (Arivu cites an example of this difference in his book. One day during interrogation,an inspector slapped him. Mistaking Arivu for a Sri Lankan Tamil,he had shouted,asking how he dared cross the sea to kill an Indian leader. The inspector,J Mohanraj,told The Indian Express a few months ago that he did not recall the incident,but did not refute it. On August 18 last year,two decades after the incident,he met the three at Vellore prison to console them. “I am not against the death penalty… But in the case of these three,I am ready to depose before the court to prove their insignificance in the actual conspiracy,” he told this paper.)

Both Santhan and Murugan,accused Numbers 2 and 3 respectively,have turned spiritual. Santhan takes care of the prison temple and both fast during the period of the Sabarimala pilgrimage. With him and his wife Nalini — accused Number 1 in the assassination case whose death penalty was commuted to life in prison — behind bars,Murugan’s concern is his daughter Harithra alias Megara. The couple married while on the run,and the girl was born inside the prison. She is now a student in Europe. “I feel sad for her for having to grow up without parental support,but I advised her not to get distracted. We failed the test that is life,she shouldn’t,” said Murugan,alleged to be an intelligence operative of the LTTE. His daughter has visited him twice,the latest in 2006.

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The death row inmates have enlisted the support of many: SIT chief DR Karthikeyan; Justice KT Thomas,one of the judges on the SC bench that confirmed the death penalty for the three (but decided against capital punishment for Nalini); abolitionists including former Kerala law minister Justice VR Krishna Iyer; and lawyers like Ram Jethmalani and Colin Gonsalves (who are arguing their case now),among others. At the end of visiting hours,Perarivalan,Santhan and Murugan spoke with hope,“We will meet outside.”