V Sriharan alias Murugan, key convict in former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi assassination case who was freed in 2022, has moved India’s Madras high court for permission to attend visa interview for travel to the United Kingdom, and also to visit Sri Lanka consulate in Chennai to process his travel documents.
A division bench of justice M S Ramesh and Justice Sunder Mohan, before which the petition filed by S Nalini on behalf of her husband Sriharan came up for hearing on Thursday, however, told her counsel S Duraiswamy and V Elangovan that the bench could not hear the case as Justice Sunder Mohan had appeared for CBI in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
The bench said it would refer the case to the chief justice, to be posted before another bench.
In the petition, Nalini said Sriharan had come to Chennai in 1996 for ‘his studies,’ and that after his conviction in the assassination case, he had completed 24 post-graduate, diploma and certificate courses, including MCA, in which he had scored 87% marks.
Recalling the history of the assassination trial, conviction and release, Nalini said she was two months pregnant at the time of her arrest on June 14, 1991, three weeks after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, and that she gave birth to her daughter S Mehara in jail. The child lived with her for two years before being allowed to join Sriharan’s family in the UK in 2006.
Noting that they spent 32 years in jail before their release in 2022, Nalini said it is 16 years since they last saw their daughter. Mehara completed her medical physics degree in the UK and has been working since 2019.
Now the parents want to seek asylum in the UK and join their daughter there. In this regard, Nalini said families of at least three sisters and two brothers of Sriharan have got asylum in the UK and have been living there for decades. “Now we want to live peacefully with our daughter,” Nalini said.
Nalini said she and Sriharan had applied for UK visa. Though she was able to attend the visa interview on Jan 30, 2024, Sriharan could not as state govt authorities and the Trichy collector as well as camp incharge of Foreigners Detention Centre in Trichy didn’t allow him to travel outside the camp.
When Nalini went to the Sri Lankan deputy high commission in Chennai with her counsel E Durai Vaiyapuri to get all-country passport for her husband, she was informed that Sri Lankan nationals could visit the office on any working day and that there was no separate of providing specific appointments.
Yet, when Nalini requested the state authorities to allow Murugan to visit the Sri Lankan deputy high commission office with escort, there was no response. Refusal to allow Sriharan to visit the deputy high commission office amounts to illegal detention, Nalini said, adding that in the case of a released co-convict Robert Payas, the deputy high commission also e-mailed a response to Trichy collector on Feb 22, 2024, stating that any Sri Lankan can visit the office any time.
She has now requested the court to direct the authorities concerned to enable Sriharan to appear before the Sri Lankan deputy commission in Chennai on any working day between 9.30am and 3.30pm with the required escort, to obtain an all-country passport, which will enable him to attend the visa interview for the UK visit.
Ever since his premature release on Nov 11, 2022, after the Supreme Court order, Sriharan and three other Sri Lankans have been living in a special campus on the campus of the Trichy central prison.
Of the four, only Santhan wanted to be sent back to Sri Lanka. He, however, fell ill and died on Feb 28.
Source: Times of India
--Agencies
