Perarivalan statement not recorded verbatim: Docu quotes ex-officer

Perarivalan’s part in the plot was he bought battery cells for the bomb that killed the former PM. The mercy pleas of Perarivalan,along with two other death row convicts in the case,Murugan and Santhan,were rejected by former president Pratibha Patil. A plea against the rejection of their clemency prayers is now in the Supreme Court.

“Arivu said he did not know why they asked him to buy this (battery). I did not record this statement that he did not know (about the batteries). Investigation was in progress,so I did not write it. Though strictly speaking,law expects you to record the statement verbatim. But in practice we don’t do that,” Thiagarajan,tasked with recording the statement of the accused in the case,said. The retired Kerala cadre officer’s remarks come 22 years after the assassination by an LTTE suicide bomber.

“I always felt a little uneasy in Arivu’s case. The confessional statement has not been appreciated the way it should have been appreciated,” he said. He added wireless intercepts between key accused Sivarasan and LTTE leader ‘Pottu’ Amman reveal the former had not disclosed the plot to anyone. In February,former Supreme Court Judge K T Thomas,who confirmed the death sentence in the case said it would be “constitutionally incorrect” to hang them without a “review” of their case as the convicts have spent over two decades in jail.

In the documentary,V R Krishna Iyer,who heads PMADP,appealed against the execution saying “whenever there is a suspicion,please don’t execute.”