A. G. Perarivalan

A. G. Perarivalan is a Tamil Nadu man convicted in the 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and the first of the convicts in that case to be freed by the Supreme Court, on 18 May 2022. He features in this record because, when the Supreme Court freed the other Rajiv Gandhi convicts after him in November 2022, the SGPC and the Akali Dal asked why Sikh prisoners were not given the same relief.

The case. He was convicted of buying the batteries used in the bomb. He was 19 at the time and has said his confession was obtained under duress, according to Scroll. The News Minute reports that a CBI official who recorded his statement later said he had failed to record Perarivalan's confession and that Perarivalan did not know what the two batteries he bought were for. A TADA court sentenced him to death in 1998, the Supreme Court confirmed it in 1999 and commuted it to life imprisonment in 2014.

Key moments

• 2018: the Tamil Nadu Cabinet recommended remission of his sentence. The Governor did not decide and forwarded the plea to the President (Scroll; The News Minute).
• 18 May 2022: a bench of Justices L. Nageswara Rao, B.R. Gavai and A.S. Bopanna ordered his release under Article 142, which lets the Court do complete justice. It held that a Governor's power to remit sentences under Article 161 cannot be delayed indefinitely and is open to judicial review, and questioned why the Governor had referred the plea to the President. He had spent over thirty years in prison (Scroll; The News Minute).
• 11 November 2022: a bench of Justices B.R. Gavai and B.V. Nagarathna ordered the release of the six other life convicts in the case, following the May order, noting more than three decades in prison and satisfactory conduct (ThePrint).
• 11 to 12 November 2022: SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal said the verdict removed the last legal obstacle to freeing Sikh prisoners who had completed their terms. SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami asked why the same relief was not extended to Sikh prisoners, called the policy discriminatory, and noted that Tamil Nadu had recommended the Rajiv Gandhi convicts' release, asking why the Centre and Punjab could not do the same (The Tribune).

What he is remembered for. In India generally, for the 2022 order that freed him after more than thirty years. In Panthic politics, as the case cited in the demand to free Balwant Singh Rajoana and other Sikh prisoners. Rajoana's mercy petition has been pending with the President since 2012, and in September 2025 the Supreme Court asked the Centre who was responsible for the delay (Indian Legal Live).