Priyanka Gandhi meets her father's assassin

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Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the daughter of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi today confirmed that she had met one of the persons involved in her father's assassination at the Vellore Prison on March 19.

According to media reports, a Chennai lawyer, D. Raj Kumar had filed an application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, seeking clarifications about the meeting between Priyanka and Nalini.

Kumar sought a response from the Superintendent of the Vellore Jail, which included details like the nature of the talks between the two women, who accompanied Priyanka and under which legal provision was Priyanka permitted to meet the prisoner.

"Yes, I did visit Vellore to meet my father's assassins. I needed to make peace with all the violence in my life and wanted to know why my father was assassinated despite being a good person," a private news channel quoted Priyanka, as saying. She described it as a personal visit undertaken on her own initiative. Nalini's mother, who is based in Coimbatore, confirmed the meeting between the two in the presence of Nalini's lawyers.

Nalini is the only surviving member of the five-member squad that was recruited to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi. A suicide bomber, Subha had carried out the attack at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu on May 21, 1991. Rajiv Gandhi and 17 others were killed on the spot.

Nalini, was originally sentenced to death, but her sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment on the intervention of Congress President Sonia Gandhi who pleaded for clemency on account of Nalini's five-year-old daughter.

Her brother Rahul Gandhi said "I have a different way of looking at these things. I don't have a problem either". Rahul said "we don't carry hatred, we don't carry anger. It's not an exercise...She felt that she wanted to go and see the person. She has been feeling it for sometime".