VELLORE: The accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case were awarded different sentences. The special investigation team that probed the assassination had proved beyond doubt the roles of 26 people in the crime. While the death sentences of four persons — Nalini, Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan — were confirmed by the Supreme Court back in 1999, only Nalini’s death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment by then President K R Narayanan on humanitarian grounds. She has since been repeatedly asking for her release on various grounds. The last time the gallows were used in the Vellore prison was in 1983, when a convict Chandru, who was condemned to death for murdering a child, was hanged. Since there was no hangman at Vellore at that time, the prison officials themselves had done it. The last hanging in the State was on April 27, 1995, when notorious serial killer Auto Shankar was executed at the Salem Central Prison. The last man to face the noose was Dhananjoy Chatterjee in Kolkata in2004, convicted for rape and murder of a 14-year-old.
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