Nalini Sriharan, a convict in the assassination case of late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, attempted suicide in prison on the night of Monday, 20 July, alleged her lawyer.
Nalini has been lodged in the Vellore women’s prison for the last 29 years. Her advocate Pugazhendhi told The Quint that there was allegedly a quarrel between Nalini and another life convict, and the latter made an oral complaint. When the officials went to question Nalini on the matter on Monday at around 8 pm, she allegedly attempted suicide, he said.
However, the lawyer added that he was suspicious of the reason and said “we want to know the actual cause.”
The advocate had last spoken to the convict in March, when she had no complaints about the prison conditions. Nalini has been speaking to her mother every week, he added.
He pointed out that in the last few decades of serving her jail term, Nalini had never taken such an extreme step.
Pugazhendhi received a call from Nalini’s husband Murugan, who is also in prison for Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. “He had called me on Monday morning requesting that Nalini be shifted from the Vellore prison to the Puzhal prison,” he told The Quint and added that a legal request for the same will be made soon.
Seven people, including Nalini and her husband Murugan, are serving life imprisonment in the case related to the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by an Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) suicide bomber during an election rally at Sriperumbudur on 21 May 1991.
The Madras High Court had dismissed in March Nalini’s petition seeking that she be released from jail since she was being “illegally detained” by the police.
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