The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the Tamil Nadu government does not have the power to release the seven convicts who assassinated former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The Centre’s approval is mandatory for the Tamil Nadu government to remit the sentences of Rajiv Gandhi’s killers, the top court ruled.

The court also said the Centre will have primacy in remitting the sentences of convicts in cases registered under central law and probed by central agencies like the CBI.

The Tamil Nadu government had announced it will release the seven convicts and had asserted that the states have the power to remit sentences under the law. It had denied accusations that the decision to release the seven was “political and arbitrary”.

Rajiv Gandhi’s killers to stay in jail:

Three assassins – Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan – were spared execution because of an exceptional delay in a decision on their mercy plea. The top court had later also stayed the release of four other convicts — Nalini, Robert Pious, Jayakumar and Ravichandran — saying there were procedural lapses on the part of the state government.

Nalini, who was earlier on death row, was granted mercy on the intervention of Rajiv Gandhi’s widow and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

A total of 26 people were found guilty of conspiring to kill Gandhi, but 19 of them were later acquitted amid a wave of sympathy for the killers, who were seen to have been fighting for the Tamil cause in the island nation.