It's obvious Jayalalithaa is playing politics of a nasty and macabre kind by declaring to free those convicted for the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, after their death sentence was commuted to life by the Supreme Court. We all agree that compassion is a great virtue and capital punishment may not have a place in the conduct of a civilised society. But that should not by any stretch mean condoning such grave offences as the assassination surely was. A meticulously planned terror attack mounted from outside the country was quite surely an offence of the gravest sort for which no compassion can be shown beyond a certain limit. It is indeed ironic that the lady who had deliberately refused to take a stand a few years ago when Karunanidhi had gone into an agitational mode to save a badly cornered Prabhakaran is now playing such chauvinstic politics. How low these politicians can stoop to for political gains!