Nalini Sriharan, one of the six convicts of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case who were released on Saturday, said she wasn’t involved in the murder of the Prime Minister of India. In an interview on Sunday, she claimed her only fault was getting acquainted with her husband’s friends. She also spoke about the difficult equation she has with her daughter, Harithra. Sriharan’s husband Murugan is a Sri Lankan national and a co-convict. Nalini said she had no role in Gandhi’s murder.
She told NDTV she had gotten acquainted with her husband’s friends. She said she helped them when they needed to go to threatens, shops and hotels. She claimed she had no personal contact with them and didn’t know their families.
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Nalini Sriharan had accompanied Dhanu — the suicide bomber who killed Gandhi — to the Congress rally venue in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu in 1991. She was captured in a photo with the bomber moments before the blast.
She was sentenced to death in 1999. However, after Gandhi’s wife Sonia Gandhi's intervention, her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. She had been in jail since 1991.
Who is Harithra?
Nalini was pregnant at the time of the assassination. She gave birth to Harithra inside the jail in 1992. Harithra remained with her in jail until she was 2 years old. She was later raised by another family.
Nalini and her husband Murugan hadn’t met their daughter till 2019. Sriharan received one-month parole from the court to attend her wedding.
Harithra is a doctor by profession and is settled in London.
Nalini told the news channel that she had forgotten her mother.
Also read: Who is Nalini Sriharan? What role did she play in assassinating Rajiv Gandhi?
She said her incarceration and her release had been very difficult for her daughter.
Before Sriharan’s release, her lawyer said Nalini may choose to live in Chennai or join her daughter in London.
In 2014, Harithra Sriharan sought an apology from Rahul Gandhi. At that time, she was a student of Bio-Medicine in the United Kingdom. She left India in 2005.
She got married in 2019.
