The Supreme Court of India ordered the release of six people convicted in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on Friday.
Gandhi was 46 years old when he was killed by a female suicide bomber at an election rally in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in 1991.
The assassination was carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Sri Lankan armed separatist group.
The convicts were released based on their “satisfactory conduct” in prison, according to India’s Supreme Court, and they had served more than three decades in prison.
The six, three of whom were sentenced to death before their sentences were commuted in 2014, are the only ones still in prison for the assassination.
Earlier this year, the court ordered the release of AG Perarivalan, another convict sentenced to death by hanging, citing good behavior.
Gandhi became India’s youngest prime minister after his mother, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984.
The family’s Congress party dominated Indian politics for decades, and Rajiv’s widow Sonia is still the most powerful figure in the organization, while their son Rahul is seen as current Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s main political opponent.
Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination was widely interpreted as retaliation for his decision to send Indian forces to Sri Lanka in 1987 to disarm Tamil rebels.
India later withdrew its troops after losing over 1,000 of them in battles with the insurgents.
The release of the convicts has sparked heated debate in India, with Congress calling the court decision “completely unacceptable” and “completely erroneous.”
“It is most unfortunate that the Supreme Court has not acted in accordance with the spirit of India on this issue,” the party said, tweeting a statement by senior member Jairam Ramesh.
However, India has a sizable Tamil population, and state governments in Tamil Nadu have repeatedly called for convicts to be released.
MK Stalin, the current chief minister of Tamil Nadu, tweeted a photo of himself hugging Perarivalan after his release earlier this year.
Gandhi’s son has spoken publicly about how he and his sister Priyanka have forgiven their father’s assassins.
“We were very upset and hurt, and we were quite angry for many years,” Rahul told the Indian Express newspaper in 2018. But they had since forgiven them, he said, “in fact, completely.”
