Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani said that there was...

Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani said that there was no ruling that the death sentence of a prisoner would automatically be commuted to life imprisonment if the state failed to execute the sentence within a year. In a letter to the Janata Party President Dr Subramanian Swamy, Advani said the federal government was considering the mercy petitions of Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan, who were awarded death sentences in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. Swamy told reporters that Advani had also informed him that death sentence of Nalini, another accused in the Rajiv case, had not yet been commuted.