On April 27, at the Madras High Court, a man who once stood in that legal system as an accused facing the death penalty, his youth consumed by prison walls stepped back in, this time wearing the black gown of an advocate. A.G. Perarivalan, one of the convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, formally enrolled as a lawyer with the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry on Monday and will practise before the Madras High Court.
The enrolment ceremony was attended by Chief Justice of the Madras High Court Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari. Wearing the black lawyer’s gown, Perarivalan stepped into the same legal system where he once stood as an accused.
The arc of his life is among the most remarkable in modern Indian legal history. He was arrested in 1991 when he was 19 years old, allegedly for supplying a 9-volt battery used in the explosive device that killed former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. He was convicted and sentenced to death. In 2014, the Supreme Court commuted his sentence to life imprisonment, citing inordinate delay in deciding his mercy petition. On May 18, 2022, a Supreme Court bench exercised its extraordinary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to order his release, noting the considerable delay by the Governor in deciding his remission plea.
Freedom, when it came, did not bring idleness. Perarivalan joined an LLB course soon after his release and cleared the All India Bar Examination in 2025. He was 54 when he donned the black robe.
His intent now is as purposeful as his journey to this point. “Will focus on providing legal aid to prisoners who often lack access to effective representation,” he told PTI. He aims to work on cases involving wrongful detention, delays in justice, and the rights of undertrials.
There is something both poignant and fitting in the direction he has chosen. The system that held him that delayed his mercy petition for years, that kept him in a legal limbo that the Supreme Court itself found unconscionable is now the system he will enter, not as its prisoner but as one of its practitioners, working for those who remain where he once was. Perarivalan spent thirty-one years as an accused, a convict, a petitioner. He knows the view from every side of a courtroom. That knowledge, combined with a law degree earned in the years immediately following his release, may make him a more effective advocate for prisoners’ rights than most.
The transformation also raises questions that Tamil Nadu has never entirely resolved about the Rajiv Gandhi case questions of youth, complicity, proportionality, and the pace of justice but those arguments belong to another forum. On April 27 at the Madras High Court, the record simply shows: A.G. Perarivalan, advocate, enrolled.
–Samuthiran
