A Supreme Court Bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and R Banumati, on Wednesday (January 24), issued notice to the CBI seeking its response to a petition filed by AG Perarivalan, one of the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. Perarivalan has sought recall of the apex court’s 1999 verdict which had upheld his conviction, along with that of six others, for the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Perarivalan is serving life imprisonment for his role in the conspiracy that led to the assassination of the former Prime Minister on May 21, 2991 at an election campaign rally in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu. Arrested in June 1991 for supplying the two nine-volt batteries for the improvised explosive device (IED) that was used in the assassination, Perarivalan has spent 26 years in prison.

In his petition, filed through advocates Gopal Sankaranarayanan and Pirabu Subramanian, Perarivalan has claimed that his conviction in the case was secured by “playing fraud” on the Supreme Court. He sought the recall of the verdict after Superintendent of Police V Thiyagarajan, who recorded his confessional statement under TADA, said in an affidavit that the investigating agency suppressed the part of Perarivalan’s statement that he was not aware of the conspiracy and the purpose for which the two batteries supplied by him would be used.

Perarivalan states in his petition that former Supreme Court judge Justice KT Thomas, who authored the conviction judgment in May 1999, stated in a media interview about the “fallacious appreciation of law wherein the confessional statement was admitted as substantial evidence”. He also cites that the CBI’s Multi Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA), probing the larger conspiracy behind Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, is yet to conclude its investigation pertaining to the explosive used in the killing. He has argued that the premier investigation agency has not been able to question a key suspect who allegedly has knowledge about the making of the bomb that was used to kill the former Prime Minister.

The petition also adds a new twist to the theory on his the bomb used in the assassination was assembled. “Further it is essential to state that DR Karthikeyan, who was the head of the Special Investigating Team of the CBI, has made statements that the IED was locally made in Sri Lanka. The internal evidence shows that the nine-volt battery was soldered with IED. If that being the case, then in all chance it could be said that the alleged nine-volt battery given by the petitioner (Perarivalan) was not at all used in the IED,” his petition states.

Asserting that “a grave prejudice” has been caused on him, Perarivalan adds that he was a “19-year-old boy when his mother handed him over to the CBI and now he is 45 years old, lost all his prime youth in prison and in death row under solitary confinement for more than 16 years”.

It may be recalled that the Supreme Court, which had upheld the death sentence to Perarivalan and other accused in 1999, had commuted the sentence to life imprisonment in February 2014. Following the Supreme Court’s decision the Tamil Nadu government had, on February 19, 2014, decided to grant remission of sentence of all the seven convicts. However, a day later the Supreme Court had stayed the Tamil Nadu government’s order.

The Bench has now posted the matter for further hearing on February 21.

—India Legal Bureau