The Tiruchi Collector on Tuesday informed the Madras High Court of having fixed an appointment with the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commission in Chennai for former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convicts Murugan alias Sriharan, Robert Payas and Jayakumar.
Appearing before a Division Bench of Justices R. Suresh Kumar and K. Kumaresh Babu, Additional Public Prosecutor R. Muniyapparaj said all the three released convicts hailed from Sri Lanka and therefore they required travel documents from the Deputy High Commission.
Since they were now detained at a foreigners’ detention camp in Tiruchi, the Collector had written to the Deputy High Commission on Monday, March 11, requesting an appointment for all three of them, and had received a reply on the same day to produce them on Wednesday afternoon.
Therefore, necessary escort arrangements had been made to transport them from the camp at around 5 a.m. on Wednesday so that they could be produced before the Deputy High Commission at 12:30 p.m., the APP said, and urged the court to dispose of a writ petition connected with the issue.
One more released convict and wife of Murugan, S. Nalini, had filed the writ petition, through her counsel S. Doraisamy and V. Elangovan, seeking a direction to the Collector to permit her husband to visit the Deputy High Commission to get an all-country passport so that they both could travel to the U.K.
The writ petitioner, an Indian national, told the court that she was pregnant when she was arrested in connection with the 1991 assassination and delivered a baby girl at the prison. Her daughter was subsequently taken to Sri Lanka by her paternal grandparents and was now living in the U.K.
Though the Supreme Court had, in 2022, ordered the premature release of all seven convicts in the assassination case, her husband and three other Sri Lankan nationals were not let free and instead transferred from the prison to the foreigners’ detention camp for want of necessary travel documents.
Now that she and her husband had decided to fly to the U.K. to reside with their daughter, the petitioner sought permission for him to be produced before the Deputy High Commission to obtain an all-country passport.
Though the relief sought was confined to Sriharan alias Murugan, the APP told the court that the Collector had gone ahead and fixed an appointment for Robert Payas and Jayakumar too, since they too were Sri Lankan nationals and required travel documents to fly back to their country.
The judges recorded the submission and disposed of Nalini’s writ petition.
Another Sri Lankan national Santhan alias T. Suthenthirarajah was the first to obtain a travel document to fly to Sri Lanka. However, he died in Chennai due to certain ailments and only his mortal remains could be flown to the island nation recently.
