Perarivalan: What was the history

What was the history of Perarivalan ’s case? Perarivalan was accused of buying the two 9-volt batteries used in the bomb to assassinate the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. He was sentenced to death by a TADA court in 1998. The Supreme Court upheld the sentence the next year but commuted it to life imprisonment in 2014. In 2015, Perarivalan submitted a mercy petition to the Tamil Nadu governor seeking release under Article 161 of the Constitution and moved to Supreme Court after ... Perarivalan is now over 50 years old. In the 1980s, Perarivalan - who was teenager back then - was a sympathiser of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE had given the task to assasinate Rajiv Gandhi to its intelligence operative Sivarasan, who was known as "One-Eyed Jack". What’s in today’s article: Background (Rajiv Gandhi case, A G Perarivalan release) Article 142 and Article 161 of the Constitution News Summary Why in news? The Supreme Court has set free the remaining six convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, extending to them the benefit of its order releasing their co-convict A G Perarivalan . Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on the night of May 21, 1991 at Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu. Fifteen others, including nine policemen, were also killed in ... Perarivalan filed a mercy petition with the President which was rejected 11 years later in 2011. The Supreme Court commuted the sentence of the death penalty since the court found the delay to be violative of procedural due process guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution in the year 2014.