The United Na­tions, in­ter­na­tional hu­man rights bod­ies, In­di­a’s Supreme Court of In­dia and In­di­a’s civil lib­er­ties groups have em­pha­sized the need to re­lease pris­on­ers and un­der­tri­als from the jails of In­dia in view of the threat of Covid19 spread. Yet, the states and the Union of In­dia are ig­nor­ing hu­man­i­tar­ian con­sid­er­a­tions, by­pass­ing le­gal­i­ties, un­der­min­ing the con­cerns and play­ing with the lives of the in­mates. Tamil Nadu Chief Min­is­ter Stalin has writ­ten a let­ter to the Pres­i­dent of In­dia  R. N. Kovind, seek­ing the re­lease of 7 Tamil pris­on­ers in the Ra­jiv Gandhi case. WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh writes an Open Let­ter to the Chief Min­is­ter say­ing that his in­ten­tions may be gen­uine but his method­ol­ogy se­ri­ously ques­tion­able.

MY  DEAR MUTHU­VEL KARUNANIDHI STALIN: VANAKKAM!! God has blessed you with the op­por­tu­nity to serve the peo­ple of Tamil Nadu at a very cru­cial point in con­tem­po­rary his­tory. While we face the at­tack of the vir­tu­ally om­nipresent Coro­n­avirus, gov­ern­ments have gone into a swirl with oli­gop­o­lis­tic ten­den­cies not only in pro­vid­ing re­lief but also in other pub­lic mat­ters of con­cern. Your gov­ern­ment has taken some steps, in­clud­ing full lock­down, but it still has to walk the talk.

I write this Open Let­ter to you to reg­is­ter my deep con­cern at the mis­sive that you have writ­ten to the Pres­i­dent of In­dia -Ram Nath Kovind, re­quest­ing him to ac­cept the then Tamil Nadu gov­ern­men­t’s rec­om­men­da­tion of Sep­tem­ber 2018 for the re­mis­sion of life sen­tences of seven Tamil pris­on­ers -S. Nalini, Mu­ru­gan, San­than, A.G. Per­ari­valan, Jayaku­mar, Robert Payas and P. Ravichan­dran, who have com­pleted their prison terms in the Ra­jiv Gandhi case.

As some­one who has been closely mon­i­tor­ing the de­vel­op­ments in the case, I am dis­mayed at the ping-pong be­ing played with the lives of these Tamil pris­on­ers by suc­ces­sive Tamil Nadu gov­ern­ments and the cur­rent char­ac­ter­is­tic foul play by  Gov­er­nor Ban­war­i­lal Puro­hit of Tamil Nadu, even in the face of Supreme Court or­ders.  Un­for­tu­nately, you have added your bit to this on­go­ing ob­nox­ious game.

You may come out as well-in­ten­tioned to the reader of your let­ter, but it is bound to be ill-fated as it trans­gresses the scope of fed­eral gov­er­nance. The Gov­er­nor of a state has to act as per the rec­om­men­da­tion of the state cab­i­net. The pre­sent ex­er­cise of the Gov­er­nor in pass­ing on the buck to the Pres­i­dent of In­dia has no par­al­lel in the his­tory of In­di­a’s cen­tre-state re­la­tions. He has done so by ex­er­cis­ing his po­lit­i­cal over­reach, made pos­si­ble be­cause of the weak stand of the state gov­ern­ment of Tamil Nadu.

Un­am­bigu­ously, the Tamil Nadu state, in writ­ing to the Pres­i­dent of In­dia has al­ready con­ceded the pow­ers of the state, for which you are re­spon­si­ble.

 Read Tamil ver­sion

If you put fed­er­al­ism into a quag­mire, you will face the sit­u­a­tion that the Tamil Nadu gov­ern­ment faced when the al­lo­ca­tion of Oxy­gen to be pro­duced by re­open­ing of the Sterilite plant, was dis­cussed in the Supreme Court and af­ter stren­u­ous protests, the Tamil Nadu gov­ern­ment had to ac­cept the di­rec­tive of the Union gov­ern­ment that pri­or­ity for Oxy­gen would be given to the needs of the Union gov­ern­ment and ful­fil­ment of the re­quire­ments of the cit­i­zens of Tamil Nadu is sec­ondary. The role of your party -Dravida Munnetra Kazhgham, ac­qui­esc­ing to the pro­posal de­spite the eye-open­ing or­der of the Madras High Court, is a clear com­prise of the in­ter­ests of the Tamil peo­ple and the en­vi­ron­ment of the state.

All you have to do is ex­er­cise the pow­ers of a State un­der Ar­ti­cle 161 of the Con­sti­tu­tion of In­dia for the re­lease of the de­tenues or grant them in­def­i­nite leave un­der Rule 40 of the Tamil Nadu Sus­pen­sion of Sen­tence Rules, 1982. This power has al­ready been ex­er­cised in the case of S. Nalini in the year 2000. You must have learnt as a child, ‘Where there is a will, there is a way.”

As you would cer­tainly know more than me, your il­lus­tri­ous fa­ther Karunanidhi was in the ini­tial stages of his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, a pa­tri­arch of Tamil rights and a cham­pion of fed­er­al­ism. His­tory of those times records that he had ap­pre­ci­ated the Anand­pur Sahib Res­o­lu­tion of the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal as it had re­ori­ented and re­it­er­ated true fed­er­al­ism grant­ing au­ton­omy to the states.

It was in­deed sad to note that in 2014, when the then Chief Min­is­ter J. Jay­alalitha an­nounced the re­lease of these seven de­tenues, us­ing pow­ers un­der Sec­tion 435 of the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Code, it was iron­i­cally your fa­ther Karunanidhi, who op­posed the idea and sought the Union gov­ern­men­t’s in­ter­ven­tion! So, in that sense, it is not sur­pris­ing that you too are pur­su­ing the same path!!

The seven Tamil pris­on­ers -S. Nalini, Mu­ru­gan, San­than, A.G. Per­ari­valan, Jayaku­mar, Robert Payas and P. Ravichan­dran, who have com­pleted their prison terms in the Ra­jiv Gandhi case and there is no rea­son what­so­ever to con­tinue to keep them in prison.

You must have learnt as a child, ‘Where there is a will, there is a way.” All your gov­ern­ment has to do is to ex­er­cise the pow­ers of a State un­der Ar­ti­cle 161 of the Con­sti­tu­tion of In­dia for the re­lease of the de­tenues or grant them in­def­i­nite leave un­der Rule 40 of the Tamil Nadu Sus­pen­sion of Sen­tence Rules, 1982. This power un­der Ar­ti­cle 161, has al­ready been ex­er­cised in the case of S. Nalini in the year 2000.

You have stated in your let­ter that “The Gov­er­nor has de­cided that the Pres­i­dent was the com­pe­tent au­thor­ity to de­cide on the plea of re­mis­sion of sen­tence of these seven per­sons and had for­warded the State gov­ern­men­t’s rec­om­men­da­tion to the Pres­i­den­t’s of­fice.”

This is seven years too late. First, the state of Tamil Nadu kept quiet over the pe­ti­tion un­der Ar­ti­cle 161 of the Con­sti­tu­tion for at least five years. Then the Union of In­dia, in its re­ply to the Supreme Court of In­dia, early this year on 4 Feb­ru­ary, has said that the Gov­er­nor has sent the pe­ti­tion to the Pres­i­dent, clearly tres­pass­ing the judge­ments in Maru Ram Vs. Union of In­dia re­ported at (1981) 1 SCC 107 at para 59 and Shamsher Singh & Anr vs The State Of Pun­jab re­ported at 1974 2 SCC 831). Is this a cat and mouse game with the lives of the seven pris­on­ers?

 Read Tamil ver­sion

In the com­ing week, the Supreme Court of In­dia will take up the mat­ter and this wa­ver­ing re­ply of the Gov­er­nor of Tamil Nadu Ban­war­i­lal Puro­hit will come up for ex­am­i­na­tion.

I ap­pre­ci­ate your lines of sup­port say­ing, “These seven per­sons have al­ready suf­fered un­told hard­ship and agony in the past three decades and have paid a heavy price. There has al­ready been an in­or­di­nate de­lay in the con­sid­er­a­tion of their pleas for re­mis­sion. In the pre­sent cir­cum­stances of the COVID-19 pan­demic, courts are also recog­nis­ing the need to de­con­gest pris­ons.”

Arivu Per­ari­valan is on med­ica­tion for uri­nary in­fec­tion and hy­per­ten­sion for a long time. His ail­ing and aged par­ents, with whom this writer has met on many oc­ca­sions and ex­pressed em­pa­thy with the fam­ily as I con­sider him to be to­tally in­no­cent,  have spent their en­tire life hop­ing to see their son out of prison.  The grant of pa­role to him, off and on, is no so­lu­tion.  Fol­low­ing rule of law, all these pris­on­ers must be re­leased with­out de­lay.

Re­mark­ably, em­pha­siz­ing that re­lease of the seven pris­on­ers is the need of the hour, you say, “It is also the will of the peo­ple of Tamil Nadu.” In­deed, it is.

I am par­tic­u­larly im­pressed by the fact that you have at­tempted to rope in other Tamil po­lit­i­cal par­ties into this de­ci­sion by say­ing, “The ma­jor­ity of the po­lit­i­cal par­ties in Tamil Nadu have been re­quest­ing for the re­mis­sion of the re­main­der of their sen­tence and for the im­me­di­ate re­lease of all the seven con­victs as they have been in­car­cer­ated for about three decades.”

Re­mark­ably, em­pha­siz­ing that re­lease of the seven pris­on­ers is the need of the hour, you say, “It is also the will of the peo­ple of Tamil Nadu.”

 Read Tamil ver­sion

Anna Stalin, the will of the Tamil peo­ple must be re­spected and ho­n­oured by the Tamil chief min­is­ter and not a func­tionary who sits com­fort­ably in the com­fort of the Rash­tra­p­ati Bhawan in Delhi and who is him­self at the mercy of the Union gov­ern­ment or even the Gov­er­nor, who is a po­lit­i­cal ap­pointee, en­sconced in the Raj Bhawan in Chen­nai. Let us see some bold Tamil ac­tion!

Fra­ter­nally yours,

Jag­mo­han Singh
Ed­i­tor, The World Sikh News

So­cial and hu­man rights ac­tivist, a strong votary of the abo­li­tion of the death penalty, Jag­mo­han Singh is the ed­i­tor of The World Sikh News and of­ten uses the tool of Open Let­ter to voice con­cerns on sub­stan­tive is­sues. He main­tains a live link with Tamil is­sues and whole­heart­edly en­dorses the cause of Tamil na­tion­al­ism and has con­sis­tently raised his voice for the re­lease of pris­on­ers in the Ra­jiv Gandhi case and jus­tice for Ee­lam Tamils in Sri Lanka.