Arivu Per­ari­valan and 6 oth­ers are lan­guish­ing in jails of Tamil Nadu even af­ter more-than-ad­e­quately com­plet­ing their prison terms. World Sikh News ed­i­tor and hu­man rights ac­tivist Jag­mo­han Singh joins the cam­paign by Tamil na­tion­al­ists to #Stand­With­ArputhamAm­mal -the mother of Per­ari­valan who is in jail for 30 years for a crime he did not com­mit. WSN ed­i­tor writes an Open Let­ter to Arputham Am­mal and ex­presses his deep feel­ings for her agony and hopes that one day soon Per­ari­valan and oth­ers will be re­leased from jail.

DEAR AMMA: VANAKKAM    I JOIN TAMIL AC­TIVISTS to stand with you, your ail­ing hus­band and fam­ily to seek the re­lease of your son Arivu Per­ari­valan, who is be­hind the four walls of prison -first Vel­lore and now Chen­nai, for the last 30 years, since he was in­car­cer­ated for a crime he did not com­mit.

You are a great mother. Run­ning from pil­lar to post -from home to prison, from lawyers to po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, your life has been a roller-coaster ride and I deeply ad­mire you for this. The ha­rass­ment that you and your fam­ily suf­fered in the ini­tial years of Arivu’s ar­rest is a grue­some story by it­self.

Amma, 30 years ago, on this day, like a good cit­i­zen,  con­fi­dent of your son’s in­no­cence, you took Arivu to the CBI and since then your jour­ney for his re­lease be­gan.

Sikh moth­ers whose sons have been ar­raigned for don­key years, even af­ter com­plet­ing their prison terms and about whose re­lease the gov­ern­ment is not tak­ing any steps, are with me in ex­press­ing affin­ity with you and shar­ing your pain and anx­i­ety.

I sym­pa­thise with you that it has taken three decades to learn that the years of in­ves­ti­ga­tion and thou­sands of pages of ev­i­dence in the Ra­jiv Gandhi case, was un­able to con­clu­sively prove that the cur­rent from the 9-volt bat­tery which trig­gered the bomb strapped to sui­cide bomber Dhanu’s body was from the cell pro­vided by Per­ari­valan.

An of­fi­cer from In­di­a’s Cen­tral Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion -CBI, which han­dled the Ra­jiv Gandhi case, af­ter many years of the con­vic­tion in the case, has pub­licly said that he had ma­nip­u­lated the so-called con­fes­sion of Per­ari­valan as the sup­plier of the 9-volt-bat­tery.

Amma, as a Sikh hu­man rights and po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist, I ex­press whole­hearted sol­i­dar­ity with Tamil na­tion­al­ists who con­tinue to es­pouse their rights and stand up for the dig­nity and ho­n­our, not only of their own peo­ple but for all strug­gling peo­ples and na­tion­al­i­ties.

It sad­dens me to note that ac­tu­ally the cur­rent from that 9-volt bat­tery has turned your life up­side down and that of your son and fam­ily.

Vis­it­ing a son who is in­no­cent for 30-years is no mean task. You vir­tu­ally saw Arivu grow in prison and I know that through­out all these years your tears have not dried up. I fully em­pathise with you. Yet, con­tin­u­ing to take care of your ail­ing hus­band, your grit and de­ter­mi­na­tion to pur­sue the case, is re­mark­able and I have seen in your eyes that like all moth­ers, your love, for now, 50-year-old Per­ari­valan has never waned.

Amma, we are liv­ing in an un­equal world. We are liv­ing at a time when though all le­gal and po­lit­i­cal au­thor­i­ties have vir­tu­ally or­dered that Per­ari­valan and oth­ers, who have more than ad­e­quately com­pleted their prison terms in the Ra­jiv Gandhi case are re­leased, the gov­er­nor of Tamil Nadu con­tin­ues to drag the case for un­con­sti­tu­tional and un­law­ful rea­sons.

You are a great mother. Run­ning from pil­lar to post -from home to prison, from lawyers to po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, your life has been a roller-coaster ride and I deeply ad­mire you for this.

I am happy for you that you get to see him some­times when he is on pa­role. I deeply ap­pre­ci­ate the ed­u­ca­tion work that Per­ari­valan has been do­ing in prison. It is com­fort­ing to note that he main­tains good health de­spite the three decades in prison.

Amma, as a Sikh hu­man rights and po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist, I ex­press whole­hearted sol­i­dar­ity with Tamil na­tion­al­ists who con­tinue to es­pouse their rights and stand up for the dig­nity and ho­n­our, not only of their own peo­ple but for all strug­gling peo­ples and na­tion­al­i­ties.

I re­call that when I met you, we could not speak much as I don’t speak or un­der­stand Tamil and you are not com­fort­able with Hindi or Eng­lish. Yet, I could gauge the depth of your agony and your grat­i­tude to­wards me and every­one who stood by you. I am pretty cer­tain that this cur­rent sol­i­dar­ity is not just a cam­paign for a day but a vig­or­ous step to­wards en­sur­ing the re­lease of Per­ari­valan.

I des­per­ately wait for the day when Per­ari­valan is re­leased and I get the op­por­tu­nity to do a Bhangra gig in cel­e­bra­tion, as promised to you and your fam­ily. Let us all hope and pray that, that day comes very soon.

With deep re­spect, love and re­gards.

Jag­mo­han Singh