Chennai, Sep 10 (IANS) Nalini Sriharan, serving life sentence for the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, Saturday met her husband Sriharan alias Murugan who is on death row for the same crime at the Vellore Central Prison.


According to jail authorities, the meeting lasted for over 30 minutes. They were meeting after more than a year.

This is the first meeting between the couple after President Pratibha Patil rejected the mercy petitions of Murugan and that of T. Suthendraraja alias Santhan and A.G. Perarivalan alias Arivu last month.

Nalini used to meet Murugan once a fortnight when she was lodged in the Vellore Women’s jail.

In June 2010 she was shifted to Puzhal Prison here after she alleged that prison authorities were trying to poison her food.

She also complained that jail authorities were preventing other inmates from interacting with her.

Nalini had applied for transfer to Vellore jail after the rejection of Murugan’s mercy petition by the president and the date of his hanging was fixed for Sep 9.

On Aug 30, the Madras High Court stayed the hanging for eight weeks in a case filed by Murugan and the two other convicts.

Rajiv Gandhi, prime minister during 1984-89, was killed by a suicide bomber at an election rally near Chennai May 21, 1991. Fourteen other people also lost their lives in the blast.

Nalini was earlier given the death sentence. On the intervention of Rajiv Gandhi's widow and now Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment