NEW DELHI
\nIndia\u2019s top court on Friday ordered the release of six people convicted over the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.
\nGandhi was 46 when he was killed by a woman suicide bomber at an election rally in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in 1991.
\nThe assassination was carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Sri Lankan armed separatist group.
\nIndia\u2019s supreme court said the convicts were being released based on their \u201csatisfactory conduct\u201d in prison and that they had served over three decades of jail time.
\nThe six (three of whom had been condemned to death before their sentences were commuted in 2014) are the last still in prison for the assassination.
\nEarlier this year, the court order the release of another convict who had been initially sentenced to hang, AG Perarivalan, citing good conduct.
\nGandhi became India\u2019s youngest prime minister after his mother and predecessor Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984.
\nThe family\u2019s Congress party dominated Indian politics for decades and Rajiv\u2019s widow Sonia remains the most powerful figure in the organisation, while their son Rahul is seen as current Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s main political opponent.
\nRajiv Gandhi\u2019s killing was largely seen as a response to his move to send Indian forces to Sri Lanka in 1987 to disarm the Tamil rebels.
\nIndia later withdrew its troops after losing more than 1,000 of them in fights with the rebels.
\nThe release of the convicts has been the subject of much debate in India, and Congress condemned the court decision as \u201ctotally unacceptable\u201d and \u201ccompletely erroneous\u201d.
\n\u201cIt is most unfortunate that the Supreme Court has not acted in consonance with the spirit of India on this issue,\u201d the party said, tweeting a statement by senior member Jairam Ramesh.
\nBut India has a significant Tamil population of its own, and state governments in Tamil Nadu have repeatedly called for the convicts to be freed.
\nEarlier this year, current Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin tweeted a picture of him hugging Perarivalan in Chennai after his release.
\nGandhi\u2019s son has over the years spoken about how he and his sister Priyanka had forgiven their father\u2019s killers.
\n\u201cWe were very upset and hurt and for many years we were quite angry,\u201d the Indian Express newspaper quoted Rahul as saying in 2018.
\nBut they had since forgiven them, he said, \u201cin fact, completely\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW DELHI India\u2019s top court on Friday ordered the release of six people convicted over the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. Gandhi was 46 when he was killed by a woman suicide bomber at an election rally in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in 1991. The assassination was carried out by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294720,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-294681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n