India rejects mercy pleas for LTTE cadres

The President of India has rejected mercy pleas from three LTTE cadres convicted of the 1991 assassination of then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, paving the way for their execution.

The appeal, sent to President Pratibha Patil by the men Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan, all known by single names was their last hope of escaping the hangman's noose, the AFP reported.

All three belonged to terrorist LTTE, which was accused of plotting the May 21, 1991 murder of Gandhi by a female suicide bomber.

Gandhi had become India's youngest ever prime minister after his mother, former premier Indira Gandhi, was assassinated in October. The shredded clothes and the shoes he was wearing when he was killed while on an election tour in the southern of the country 20 years ago remain on display in a museum in the Indian capital.

"The rejection (of the clemency petitions) happened last week after the president returned from a foreign tour," presidential spokeswoman Archana Datta told AFP.

Although the Supreme Court upheld the original death penalty verdict for the three convicts it later commuted the capital punishment to life in prison for Nalini Sriharan, an Indian Tamil woman who was also convicted.

The three men had sought a presidential pardon after the top court's verdict.

Gandhi's killing was seen in India as retaliation for a 1987 Indian government pact with the Sri Lankan government to disarm the guerrillas, who had been trained and armed by New Delhi in the early 1980s.

After that pact, the LTTE fought Indian troops deployed to Sri Lanka by Rajiv Gandhi's government to supervise the accord. India withdrew its troops after 32 months in which it lost 1,200 soldiers at the hands of the terrorists.

Ten Indians and nine Sri Lankans sentenced to death by a lower court for their involvement in Rajiv Gandhi's assassination were freed after they were acquitted by the Supreme Court in 1999.