New Delhi: The National Law University, Delhi has cancelled a planned talk by A.G. Perarivalan, who was convicted in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and released from jail in May this year.

The talk had been organised by Project 39A, a research wing within NLUD that studies legal aid, torture, forensics, mental health in prisons, and the death penalty, as its annual lecture.

On Wednesday (December 14) evening, Project 39A's Twitter handle posted an official notice from the university stating that the talk was being cancelled due to "unforeseen circumstances".

Earlier on December 13, Project 39A announced that the talk would be held online instead of in Chennai's Asian College of Journalism as planned, because of "serious threats of vandalism and violence to the venue over our choice of speaker". In the statement announcing this change, Project 39A said that Perarivalan would be talking about "his experience searching for justice through 31 years of imprisonment".

"The lecture 'The Denial of Justice and A Quest Unfinished' is Perarivalan's story of struggle. The human impact of a broken system must guide criminal justice reform," the statement concluded.

After NLUD's decision, executive director of Project 39A Anup Surendranath tweeted, "We lost this battle."

The Wire has reached out to NLUD vice-chancellor Harpreet Kaur and registrar Anupama Goel asking why the talk was cancelled. This article will be updated when they respond.

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