Court notice on parole plea to Rajiv case convict Ravi

A petition filed by P Rajeswari of Aruppukkottai, Virudhunagar district, mother of detenue Ravi alias Ravichandran, came up for hearing before a Division Bench of Justices T Raja and B Pugazhendi. The petitioner sought a month’s parole citing that his son Ravichandran was among those seven life convicts languishing in prison for over 28 years in the assassination case.

Ravichandran submitted three petitions, among the two on April 30 in 2018 and the other on June 18, 2018 to the Chief Minister through the Superintendent of Prison, Central Prison, Madurai, seeking interim relief and long parole until disposal of the case pending before theApex court.

On October 1, 2018, representations were made with all facts to respondents including Principal Secretary, Home (Prison V) Department, Chennai, Additional Director General of Prison, Deputy Inspector General of Prison, Madurai Range and Superintendent of Prison, Madurai for granting either long parole or long ordinary leave till the Governor decided on the resolution passed by the council of ministers but, no action has been taken. Due to inaction by the respondents, habeaus corpus petition was filed before the court seeking to direct the respondents to grant long parole to Ravichandran.

When the petition came up for hearing on December 18, 2018, the Additional Advocate General opposed long parole, but a specific period for less than a month on any grounds for ordinary leave as per Rule 20 of Tamil Nadu Suspension of Sentence Rules, 1982, could be considered.

Subsequently, the court passed order providing liberty to make fresh representation before authority concerned for grant of parole for a specific period. Based on the order, detailed representations were made to the respondents on March 27, 2019 for ordinary leave not less than a month. Since representations were not considered, habeaus corpus petition was filed again seeking a month’s ordinary leave.

On January 15, 2019, the court directed the respondents to consider the petitioner’s representation within a period of three weeks. But, no action was taken, claimed the petitioner.

After hearing, the bench questioned the objections raised by the Department of Prisons over granting parole to Ravichandran. Further, the bench asked how come such pleas get rejected, while State government adopted resolution to release these convicts.

Hence, the bench directed the Secretary, Department of Prisons to respond and adjourned the case to the first week of January, 2020.