Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convict Murugan alias Sriharan can only be repatriated to Sri Lanka, that too if its Deputy High Commission in Chennai issues the necessary travel documents, and cannot be sent to the United Kingdom as sought by him, the Foreigners Regional Registration Officer (FRRO) told the Madras High Court on Monday.
Appearing before a Division Bench of Justices D. Krishnakumar and P. Dhanabal, Additional Solicitor General AR.L. Sundaresan said sending the convict to the United Kingdom might set a bad precedent, and that other foreigners who enter the country without valid travel documents would also insist on deporting them to a country of their choice instead of their home country.
On the other hand, the petitioner’s counsel V. Elangovan argued there were precedents of foreigners having been sent to a country of their choice and claimed that, in 2001, Ruban alias Sivaruban was allowed to fly to the United Kingdom. However, the senior judge in the Bench said it was too premature to decide that question in the present writ petition.
The Bench said the convict, now lodged in a special camp in Tiruchi, had only sought a direction to the State government to provide escort for visiting the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commission in Chennai to obtain an all-country passport. The State government had, on its own accord, agreed to provide such an escort if he was called for an interview by the Deputy High Commission.
Therefore, if he receives any intimation from the Commission for the interview, he could forward it to the Public Department Secretary and Tiruchi Collector for providing the escort, the judges ordered. Only after coming to know whether the Deputy High Commission chooses to issue a passport or just a one-time travel document, a further request could be made to the FRRO regarding deportation, they added.
Filing an affidavit on behalf of the petitioner, his wife, S. Nalini, 58, said her husband was a Sri Lankan Tamil who, she claimed, had come to India on January 26, 1991, to pursue his studies because of the ethnic problem in the island nation. After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in May 1991, the couple was arrested along with many others by the Central Bureau of Investigation on July 14, 1991.
Claiming both of them were innocent, the deponent of the affidavit said they were implicated on the basis of a “false confession” prepared by the investigators. However, a special court for Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act cases awarded death sentence to them on January 28, 1998. The sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court, too, on May 11, 1999.
Though her sentence was commuted to life term in the year 2000, the Supreme Court commuted her husband’s capital punishment to life sentence only on February 18, 2014, after a prolonged legal battle. Thereafter, on September 9, 2018, the State Cabinet passed a resolution to release all the seven convicts in the assassination case and, accordingly, the Supreme Court ordered their release on November 11, 2022.
Despite being released on November 12, 2002, her husband was lodged in a special camp (foreigners detention centre), within the Tiruchi central prison, as he was a Sri Lankan national, she said. Further, stating that her husband “cannot go to his home country due to the present situation there,” she said, “There is no safety in Sri Lanka to his life.”
Since their daughter, born in prison on January 21, 1992, was now residing in the United Kingdom, and her husband’s five siblings were also residing in the same country, Ms. Nalini said she and her husband would prefer flying down to the United Kingdom directly from India, for which he required an all-country passport from the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commission in Chennai.
Published - December 18, 2023 06:56 pm IST
