Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The Madras High Court Tuesday stayed for eight weeks the hanging of Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan, the three Rajiv Gandhi assassins. They were scheduled to be executed on September 9 following the rejection of their clemency petition by the President of India.
A bench consisting of Justices C Nagappan and M Sathayanarayanan said there had been a delay of more than 11 years in the disposal of the petitions filed by the convicts to the President seeking clemency. The judges issued notices to the Centre, the state and Tamil Nadu police seeking explanation in the inordinate delay in the disposal of the clemency petition.
The Madras High Court Tuesday stayed for eight weeks the hanging of Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan, the three Rajiv Gandhi assassins. They were scheduled to be executed on September 9 following the rejection of their clemency petition by the President of India.
A bench consisting of Justices C Nagappan and M Sathayanarayanan said there had been a delay of more than 11 years in the disposal of the petitions filed by the convicts to the President seeking clemency. The judges issued notices to the Centre, the state and Tamil Nadu police seeking explanation in the inordinate delay in the disposal of the clemency petition.Full Story>>>
=====================================================
Tuesday , August 30 , 2011
Two years after its decisive victory against the Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka, the Mahinda Rajapaksa government has announced its intention to allow the state of emergency in the country to lapse. The country, which first had emergency declared in 1971 amid fears of a Marxist takeover of government, has been under martial law intermittently for the past three decades and continuously since 2005 after the Tamil rebels carried out a spate of assassinations. The withdrawal of emergency — which gave sweeping powers to the administration to arrest and detain people without trial and deny them basic freedoms — was expected, and fervently hoped for, after the end of the war in 2009, but the Rajapaksa government refused to comply. The extension of the emergency regulations since then, month after month, have kept alive and fed on fears of the “enemy” amid the people. The law has allowed the Rajapaksa government to throttle dissent, mug the media and justify the concentration of power in its hands. It has done nothing to further the cause of peace or the normalization of ethnic ties in post-war Sri Lanka. Hence the repeal is bound to be welcomed by the critics of the government, by the people of the country and by the international community. Read together with the holding of the recent local council polls in the strife-torn north and east of Sri Lanka, the lifting of emergency can even be seen as indication of the government’s determination to allow democracy free play. Full Story>>>
===================================================
CHENNAI, August 29, 2011The Tamil Nadu Assembly on Tuesday unanimously adopted a resolution for commuting the death sentence of the three convicts - A.G.Perarivalan alias Arivu, V.Sriharan alias Murugan and T.Suthendraraja alias Santhan - in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case to life sentence. Chief Minister Jayalalithaa moved the resolution in this regard and the House unanimously adopted it. She said the resolution took into consideration the overwhelming sentiment of the people of Tamil Nadu who wanted her government to commute the death sentence. The resolution also requested the President of India to reconsider the mercy petitions filed by the three convicts and to commute the death sentence to life.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa said the resolution took into consideration the overwhelming sentiment of the people of Tamil Nadu who wanted her government to commute the death sentence. File photo
=====================================================
FINISHING LINE
Tuesday , August 30 , 2011Two years after its decisive victory against the Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka, the Mahinda Rajapaksa government has announced its intention to allow the state of emergency in the country to lapse. The country, which first had emergency declared in 1971 amid fears of a Marxist takeover of government, has been under martial law intermittently for the past three decades and continuously since 2005 after the Tamil rebels carried out a spate of assassinations. The withdrawal of emergency — which gave sweeping powers to the administration to arrest and detain people without trial and deny them basic freedoms — was expected, and fervently hoped for, after the end of the war in 2009, but the Rajapaksa government refused to comply. The extension of the emergency regulations since then, month after month, have kept alive and fed on fears of the “enemy” amid the people. The law has allowed the Rajapaksa government to throttle dissent, mug the media and justify the concentration of power in its hands. It has done nothing to further the cause of peace or the normalization of ethnic ties in post-war Sri Lanka. Hence the repeal is bound to be welcomed by the critics of the government, by the people of the country and by the international community. Read together with the holding of the recent local council polls in the strife-torn north and east of Sri Lanka, the lifting of emergency can even be seen as indication of the government’s determination to allow democracy free play. Full Story>>>
===================================================
Rajiv assassination: TN Assembly calls for clemency for convicts
CHENNAI, August 29, 2011The Tamil Nadu Assembly on Tuesday unanimously adopted a resolution for commuting the death sentence of the three convicts - A.G.Perarivalan alias Arivu, V.Sriharan alias Murugan and T.Suthendraraja alias Santhan - in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case to life sentence. Chief Minister Jayalalithaa moved the resolution in this regard and the House unanimously adopted it. She said the resolution took into consideration the overwhelming sentiment of the people of Tamil Nadu who wanted her government to commute the death sentence. The resolution also requested the President of India to reconsider the mercy petitions filed by the three convicts and to commute the death sentence to life.Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa said the resolution took into consideration the overwhelming sentiment of the people of Tamil Nadu who wanted her government to commute the death sentence. File photo
