Rajiv Gandhi and his wife Sonia arrive at the New Delhi airport in this May 26, 1985 file photo (Courtesy: Associated Press)
The union government has pushed the button on a likely confrontation with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa by asking the Supreme Court not to show any mercy to the killers of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
"This was a brutal incident in which 18 persons died and over 200 sustained injuries and the killers deserve no sympathy or mercy," said the Centre's lawyer, Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, following the line taken by the earlier Congress-led government.
The Tamil Nadu government, headed by J Jayalalithaa, wants to free seven people convicted for the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by a suicide bomber from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The separatist militant group's fight for ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka is an emotive issue in Tamil Nadu.
As leader of the third-largest party in the Lok Sabha, Ms Jayalalithaa wields considerable power in Delhi. In the current session of Parliament, the government, under attack from the opposition over three "tainted" leaders, could use a friend.
This will not help. The Centre has told the Supreme Court that the Rajiv Gandhi assassination was investigated by the CBI and not the state police, which means the convicts cannot be released without Delhi's sanction. The death sentences of the seven convicts have been commuted to life sentences. One of them, Nalini, was visited in prison by Rajiv Gandhi's daughter, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
A state government can decide to release prisoners if they have served 14 years of a life sentence. The Tamil Nadu government said it therefore had the right to free all seven people. But the former Congress-led government challenged that in the Supreme Court. "The release of the killers of a former prime minister of India and our great leader, as well as several other innocent Indians, would be contrary to all principles of justice," then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had said.