Misplaced sympathy for Nalini

There were no extenuating circumstances to commute Nalini’s death sentence to life sentence in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, as pointed out by the Supreme Court. In the circumstances, releasing her from jail will set a bad precedent.


NALINI HAS emerged almost overnight as one who is more sinned against than sinning, thanks to the meeting Priyanka Vadra had with her recently at the Vellore jail. If Vadra chose to forget and forgive Nalini as her meeting with the incarcerated Nalini suggests, it shows Vadra’s magnanimity towards someone who definitely had a hand in the assassination of her father. It does not suggest that the incarcerated Nalini is innocent or more sinned against than sinning. But this unfortunately is the impression gaining ground thanks to the way Nalini’s involvement is being portrayed in a section of the vernacular press lately.

It is a fact that she is the mother of a teenaged girl, has been a law-abiding prisoner, has pursued several academic courses and come out with flying colours in them during incarceration. She has also been in touch with the Sonia Gandhi family explaining the various academic activities she has been pursuing ever since she was incarcerated and the progress her daughter has been making in the academic field. In true Catholic spirit, Sonia Gandhi and her children seem to have decided to forget the past and forgive Nalini. But it is precisely this transformation on the part of the Sonia Gandhi family that Nalini was counting on. She had hoped to touch a chord with the Sonia Gandhi family to regain her freedom. In fact, her act of marrying Murugan, her accomplice and junior by several years and becoming pregnant promptly was part of a well-planned strategy on the part of Nalini to escape the hangman’s noose and buy freedom. She tried her best to project herself as a victim of circumstances. Should we succumb to such theatrics and pardon someone who mercilessly killed the prime minister of a country who trusted her and interacted with her? Even if Sonia, her son and her daughter are favourably disposed to pardon Nalini, the government should not succumb.

After all, the highest court of the land, namely, the Supreme Court, found Nalini guilty. In fact, if she is released because she has mothered a kid, it may set a bad precedent. All that a woman has to do to escape the hangman’s noose after murdering an innocent individual is to get married and become pregnant promptly. After sometime, her death sentence will be commuted to life sentence, courtesy, magnanimity on the part of people like Sonia. Eventually, the sympathy factor will see to it that she is released from prison too. In sum, after committing a cold-blooded murder, a woman can get away by using this strategy. The Court went into all these facts before pronouncing the death sentence.

On her part, Nalini has to be true to herself. Her disclosure to Vadra that she was not part of the group that plotted and executed Rajiv’s assassination could not be true. Nalini should not have bluffed to, of all the people, Vadra because it is courtesy Vadra’s mother, that she is alive today. Instead, she should have made a clean breast of it and issued an appeal to other like-minded criminals or prospective criminals to desist from such cowardly acts. 15 others, including a policeman and a kid died during Rajiv’s assassination. Nalini’s counsel argued in the court that she got involved in the conspiracy only to please her lover, Murugan. In the circumstances, Nalini’s disclosure to Vadra that she had no hand in the assassination of Rajiv should be taken with a pinch of salt. The counsel wanted to capitalise on another fact – in India, no woman had been hanged since independence. The Court did its best to be as lenient as possible within the framework of the law. In his verdict, Justice Quadri said, “Indeed the dilemma whether a sentence of death should be pronounced upon a woman has been troubling my mind for a considerable time. But then in this case, the person, Dhanu, who opted to become a human bomb was a woman.”

In the circumstances, sympathy for Nalini is misplaced. In fact, commuting her death sentence to life sentence was a blunder that should have been avoided. Hanging her would have acted as an effective deterrent. It would have sent a clear message to prospective women criminals that if they committed a crime, which attracted death penalty, they would be hanged too.

S Shivakumar, merinews, 20 April 2008, Sunday