Chennai, April 30: Nalini Sriharan, serving a life sentence in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, today moved Madras High Court seeking early release.

“I am eligible to be considered for premature release from June 18, 2005, since I have completed 14 years of imprisonment on June 17, 2005,” Nalini’s petition, challenging a government order rejecting her appeal, said.

Nalini’s death sentence was commuted to life in April 2000. The wife of LTTE militant Murugan, who is on death row, recalled in her petition that her initial appeal for mercy to the then Tamil Nadu governor had been rejected. However, she had also appealed to Sonia Gandhi, “stating the real facts”. Sonia then issued a statement that “she did not have any objection granting pardon to the accused in the Rajiv Gandhi murder case,” the petition said.

It was filed on her behalf by a battery of lawyers led by S. Doraisamy, and comes close on the heels of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra calling on Nalini in a Vellore prison recently.

Based on Sonia’s statement and the dissenting judgment of the Supreme Court judge, Justice K.T. Thomas, the state government had recommended to the governor “to commute my death sentence to life imprisonment,” the petition said.

Murugan’s mercy plea is pending before the President.

Nalini said she was not considered for premature release in 2005, 2006 and 2007 although the Tamil Nadu government had passed an order in September 2006 granting “premature release” to 472 life convicts who had completed 10 years or more in jail.

The home department in October 2007 issued an order rejecting “my request for premature release on the basis of the recommendations of the additional director-general of prison,” Nalini said, adding that her writ petition was against that order.

Claiming that the rejection was “arbitrary, illegal and without exercising the rules framed in the ‘Tamil Nadu Prison Rules, 1983’”, Nalini said she was entitled to a remission of 2,404 days for good conduct and acquiring academic qualifications while in jail, among other reasons.

“Since the maximum period of imprisonment is 20 years, deducting my earned remission, I am entitled for the premature release,” the petition said.

The prison advisory board, which did not recommend her for early release, had failed to consider her social background, that she was educated, her conduct in prison, notable change in attitude, health and mental conditions or the possibility of resettlement, she said.

It had only considered the “facts of the criminal case” in which she was convicted, and “some other extraneous matter about what is still going on in Sri Lanka between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan Government”.