The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the transfer of the case of Rajiv Gandhi’s killers challenging the rejection of their mercy plea out of Tamil Nadu.
The Supreme Court decided to hear the plea of Rajiv Gandhi’s killers and directed the case to be transferred before it.
Weeks before they were scheduled to be hanged in September, Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan had appealed to the Madras High Court, which stayed their execution.
The trio was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court in 1999. Their mercy petitions, filed 11 years ago asking for their sentence to be commuted to life in prison, were rejected in August last year by President Pratibha Patil.
Later a Chennai based lawyer LR Venkat approached the Supreme Court urging that this case should be transferred to SC. Venkat contention was that SC is already hearing similar petition of Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar. He also said that atmosphere in Chennai is not such where free trial in this case can be expected.
On Tuesday, SC accepted this application and transferred the case before itself. Now, SC will do hearing on petitions of the murder convicts. Next hearing of the case will be on July 10.
