Rajiv Gandhi's assassin, Nalini Sriharan, will remain in jail.

The Tamil Nadu government has told the Madras High Court that it has rejected Nalini's appeal to leave the Vellore prison where she is serving a life sentence. She has so far spent 19 years in prison.

Nalini had asked to be set free on the grounds that she is not keeping well and wants to spend some time with her daughter before she dies. 

The Prison Advisory Board has rejected Nalini's plea on 8 grounds. Among them: that her crime is heinous and that she participated in Gandhi's assassination fully aware of what she was doing. .  Another factor that worked against the 43-year-old: her mother resides near a VVIP area and the US Consulate in Chennai and that her release could trigger law and order problems. The Board's conclusion: "Considering the social history, circumstances of criminal behaviour and criminality, her case is not fit for recommendation for premature release.

Nalini was arrested in 1991 and sentenced to death by the Supreme Court in 1999. After she had a baby girl in prison, Rajiv's wife, Sonia, intervened, and Nalini's sentence was changed to life imprisonment.

In September last year, Nalini went on a hunger strike to demand that she be set free. In her appeal to the Madras High Court, she said, "I would like to settle down peacefully... I am already 43. Due to my health condition after 18 years in jail, I cannot expect to live long."

Nalini first asked to be released from jail in 2007, but an advisory board at that time rejected her request. Nalini appealed to the Madras High Court after that.

Hope for Nalini's early release brightened after Priyanka Gandhi secretly met her in prison two years ago. Priyanka, who was a teenager when her father was killed, later told NDTV that she had forgiven her father's killer.