In a controversial claim, Sankaranarayanan, the ageing father of Nalini Sriharan, the life convict in former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, has disputed the widely perceived belief that Padma, a co-convict, was her mother. Instead he has claimed that Nalini’s mother was one Valliammal.

Nalini, the lone surviving accused to be present at the assassination spot of Rajiv Gandhi on the fateful night of May 21, 1998, (the others – human bomb Dhanu was blown to pieces, and key conspirator Sivarasan and his accomplice Subha were gunned down in Bangalore later), had recently moved the Madras High Court seeking a month’s parole to visit her ailing father Sankaranarayanan.

Even as the state government has strongly opposed granting of parole, her father, who is living in Tirunelveli in southern Tami Nadu, has told an English daily here that his wife Valliammal had died three years ago. The man is reluctant to meet Nalini as he detests the fact that the police would be escorting her.

“I have met Nalini only once in Vellore prison years ago. She did not visit us even when her mother, my wife Valliammal, died three years back,” he has been quoted as saying in the report. According to him, the police had identified Padma as Nalini’s mother to suit their convenience.

Sankaranarayanan’s reported claim is baffling as Padma and her son Bagyanathan were the first accused to be arrested in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case in June 1991. It was only later that a pregnant Nalini, who had eloped with co-accused Murugan alias Sriharan to get married at Tirupati, were arrested on their return to Chennai.

“This claim about Valliammal is simply humbug. The human bomb Dhanu and Murugan had stayed at Nalini’s house in Chennai before the assassination. Nalini’s mother Padma and brother Bagyanathan were very much living in the same house,” recalled a police officer, who had assisted the SIT in the case.

Padma was working as a nurse in a private clinic in Chennai and Bagyanathan had purchased a printing press from a LTTE cadre. It was through Bagyanathan that the LTTE cadres had entered his home and subsequently Murugan allegedly brainwashed her by providing LTTE literature highlighting the excesses committed by the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Tamil-dominated areas of Sri Lanka.

In fact, at the time when Nalini and her mother and brother were arrested not much was reported in the media about her father. Sankaranarayanan, incidentally, is a retired sub-inspector of police.

Both Padma and Bagyanathan were sentenced to death along with Nalini, Murugan and 22 others by the trial court in Poonamallee in January 1998. A year later, the Supreme Court had upheld Nalini and Murugan’s conviction but let off Padma and Bagyanathan as they were not key conspirators in the case and had served the sentences for other offences.

Nalini’s sentence was later commuted to life by the then Tamil Nadu Governor Fathima Beevi after Rajiv Gandhi’s wife Sonia recommended the same. Even as recently as February 3, Padma had appealed for her daughter’s release on parole.

The last time Nalini came out on parole was some nine years ago to attend her brother Bagyanathan’s wedding in Chennai.(FPJ Bureau)