Nalini Sriharan, 43, who is jailed in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, said in her petition before the Madras High Court on Wednesday that she had already served nearly 17 years in prison.

Her lawyer, Mr S.Doraiswamy, noted that a life term in Tamil Nadu is only 20 years, according to the state jail manual.

In addition, the probation officer at the Vellore central prison where Nalini is serving her sentence had recommended that she be released for good conduct and because she had already spent nearly 17 years in jail, added Mr Doraiswamy.

Nalini's petition comes just weeks after Mr Gandhi's daughter Priyanka, who bears a striking resemblance to her father, had visited her in jail to find out why a 'good man' like her father was brutally killed.

Nalini, the only Indian accomplice of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the assassination, had accompanied an LTTE female suicide bomber to an election rally attended by Mr Gandhi in Sriperumbudur on May 21, 1991.

Mr Gandhi was killed in the attack, along with scores of others in the crowd.

The killing shocked many Indians, especially those in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere who were sympathetic to the Tigers.

After the assassination, many turned their backs on the LTTE.

Nalini was arrested on June 14, 1991, and was sentenced to death along with three others, including her husband Murugan.

But Nalini had her sentence commuted to life in 2000 after Ms Priyanka's mother and ruling Congress party president Sonia Gandhi petitioned for clemency.

Nalini is now the mother of a five-year-old daughter, who was born in prison and is living with Nalini's parents-in-law in Sri Lanka.

The court, which rejected her past petitions for early release, will take up her latest petition next month.

Sources close to the Gandhi family say Ms Priyanka and her brother Rahul, who were 19 and 20 respectively when their father was assassinated, are still traumatised by the event.

Ms Priyanka's visit to prison to see Nalini, which was debated by her family for several days before the go-ahead was given, was an effort to obtain 'emotional closure'.

Her visit, on March19, was kept secret until the media got wind of it almost a month later.

Ms Priyanka confirmed that she had visited Nalini, who, according to police investigations, was the back-up suicide bomber if the original bomber, Dhanu, failed.

'It was purely a personal visit on my own initiative...' said Ms Priyanka in a statement.

'I do not believe in anger or violence and I refuse to let it overpower me. Meeting Nalini was my way of coming to terms with my father's death.'