The State government on Wednesday produced before the Madras High Court a letter written by it to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) seeking a clarification as to whether former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convicts S. Nalini and her husband Murugan alias V. Sriharan could be allowed to make WhatsApp video calls to the U.K. and Sri Lanka.

Justices N. Kirubakaran and V.M. Velumani perused the communication and asked State Public Prosecutor A. Natarajan as to why the government had not made any recommendation to the Centre for allowing the convicts to make the video calls on humanitarian grounds. They pointed out that the letter merely seeks the views of the Centre on the issue and nothing much.

They later directed the SPP to serve a copy of the letter on the petitioner’s counsel M. Radhakrishnan and P. Pugalenthi and adjourned the case by a week. Nalini’s mother S. Padma, 80, had filed a habeas corpus petition in the court seeking permission for her daughter and son-in-law to talk to his mother Somani Ammal in Sri Lanka and sister Raji in London.

The request was made to help the couple console their relatives in view of Murugan’s father Vetrivel’s death in the island nation on April 27. The SPP told the court that though all convicts were permitted to make domestic video calls in view of the ban on interviews to fight COVID-19, none of them could be allowed to make such calls to foreign countries.