Chennai, April 25 :     Tamil Nadu Governor M. Fathima Beevi has commuted the death sentence on Nalini, convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, to a life term. Nalini has a seven-year-old daughter who is being brought up by relatives abroad. The Governor, however, refused to grant mercy to the child's father Murugan, as also to Perarivalan and Chinna Santhan, the other convicts on death row. The order, dated yesterday, was communicated to the four accused in Vellore prison today, jail superintendent Balachandra said. Defence lawyer N. Chandrasekaran said he would go to Vellore tomorrow to obtain the three prisoners' signatures on mercy petitions addressed to President K.R. Narayanan. The Governor had rejected the clemency pleas of all four last year, but the order was set aside by Madras High Court on the ground that she had not taken the advice of the Cabinet. The clemency debate made the headlines after Congress president Sonia Gandhi, prompted by her children Rahul and Priyanka, requested the President to commute the death sentence on Nalini as she was the mother of a small child. Narayanan had passed on the issue to the government and also conveyed Sonia's wishes to the Tamil Nadu Governor. The power to grant mercy lies with the President but he usually acts on the advice of the Centre, especially the home ministry. With the Governor giving life to Nalini, it is now for home minister L.K. Advani to decide whether the mother of the child born in captivity can be given a presidential pardon. By agreeing to spare Nalini's life, the DMK government has bit the bullet and taken a decision that is likely to raise eyebrows in the Tamil nationalist lobby. The government feels that the Centre would take the cue and commute the death sentence on the other three as well. Sympathisers of the Eelam cause in the state have been persistently campaigning for the commutation, with PMK leader S. Ramadoss and MDMK chief Vaiko - both allies of the Vajpayee government - joining the chorus. Nalini and the other accused were among the 26 sentenced to death by the Tada court in Poonamallee, near Chennai, in January 1998, nearly seven years after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination by a human bomb in Sriperumbudur. But 19 of them were acquitted by the Supreme Court and three others were sentenced to life, leaving the four to face the noose. Their review petitions were rejected by the apex court. Justice K.T. Thomas, who wrote a dissenting judgment, had sought to speak up for Nalini and stressed that her daughter should be saved from 'imposed orphanhood'.