New Delhi: Almost two decades after former Indian premier Rajiv Gandhi lost his life to a ghastly assassination plot hatched and executed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE), his three surviving assassins are now juggling with Indian law to save their lives from the gallows. Already convicted and sentenced to death for Gandhi's assassination, the fate of the three LTTE men – Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan – will now be decided by the Supreme Court, the highest judicial authority in India, which on Tuesday decided to transfer to itself their pleas challenging the Indian President Pratibha Patil's rejection of their mercy pleas last year. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in a suicide bombing at a town called Sriperimbudur in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, while he was on his way to address an election campaign rally on May 21, 1991. The assassination plot was executed by an LTTE woman suicide bomber Thenmozhi Rajaratnam, also known as Dhanu who detonated an RDX laden belt strapped to her body after garlanding the former premier. The entire assassination was caught on film by a cameraman who also got killed in the explosion. Rajiv Gandhi's killing was reportedly an act of revenge by the LTTE for Gandhi's role in sending India's forces to help the Sri Lankan Army tackle the island nation's civil war. His widow, Sonia, currently heads the Congress party which has been in power in India since 2004.
