A convict who has spent 26 years in jail for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi has requested the Supreme Court in India to reopen the case and cancel his conviction. This, after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said in court that it could not properly investigate the bomb that killed the former prime minister because it "got no help from Sri Lankan authorities, Indian media reported.
AG Perarivalan was convicted of supplying two nine-volt batteries for the belt-bomb that killed the former prime minister in 1991, and sentenced to life in jail. Last year, he had asked for a reprieve saying that the CBI dropped the part in his confession where he had said he had "absolutely no idea" what the batteries were for, NDTV reported.
The CBI told the top court that the conspiracy behind the bomb that killed Rajiv Gandhi could not be investigated as "Sri Lankan authorities were not cooperating".
Perarivalan's appeal quoted V Thiagarajan - a senior CBI officer at the time - who had said that he hadn't questioned him properly. He had also told the top court that the person who made the bomb is in Sri Lanka and hadn't been questioned yet by investigators.
Perarivalan was 19 when he was arrested weeks after the assassination. He spent 14 years in solitary confinement after being sentenced to death. That was changed to life term by the Supreme Court in 2014.
Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a woman operative of the separatist Lankan Tamil outfit LTTE, who greeted him at a rally in Sriperumbudur town with a bomb strapped to her chest.
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