ELECTION 99
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

President urged not to grant clemency to Nalini

All-India Anti-Terrorist Front chairman Maninderjit Singh Bitta has urged President K R Narayanan not to grant clemency to Nalini, sentenced to death in the Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case.

Addressing the press in Amritsar, Bitta said Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's request to the President that Nalini's death sentence be commuted was the gesture born out of compassion and womanhood.

Sonia Gandhi's views, as also those of her children on the subject, show a degree of stoicism in consonance with Nehru-Gandhi traditions, Bitta said.

However, Bitta said that such an approach showed ignorance of the "politics of elimination" indulged in by the "goons and gangsters" who caused incalculable damage to the country's heritage.

The former Youth Congress president reminded the President that no clemency was shown to the assassins of father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi and then prime minister Indira Gandhi.

Bitta strongly criticised former chairperson of the National Commission for Women Mohini Giri, saying that she broke the news of Sonia Gandhi's mercy appeal to the President to provide "strength" to Guild of Service, a new non-government organisation that is campaigning for the abolition of capital punishment.

Bitta said that acceding to Sonia Gandhi's request would encourage criminal and militant outfits to engage women's suicide squads to kill political personalities.

Bitta urged Sonia Gandhi to help and protect Nalini's daughter through the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.

If there were some constraints or difficulties, Bitta said, the AIATF would adopt the girl as the nation's daughter and ensure her upbringing in a befitting manner.

Tell us what you think of this report