By Krittivas Mukherjee

NEW DELHI, April 15 (Reuters) - Nearly 17 years after a suicide bomber blew up former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, his daughter has met one of those jailed for the murder, seeking to come to terms with her loss.

Priyanka Gandhi's secret meeting with Nalini Sriharan at a prison in southern Indian last month has sparked a media frenzy, forcing her to plead that her privacy and emotions be respected.

"Meeting with Ms. Nalini was my way of coming to peace with the violence and loss that I have experienced," Priyanka, 19 years old at the time of her father's killing, said in a statement on Tuesday.

"I would be deeply grateful if this could be respected."

The Times of India newspaper quoted Nalini's lawyer as saying the two women spoke about their families and children in a meeting both seemed happy about.

Nalini, her husband and two others were sentenced to death for conspiring to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

But her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment at the pleading of Sonia Gandhi, head of India's ruling Congress and widow of Rajiv, so that her young daughter would not be orphaned. The other three remain on death row.

The assassination was carried out by a woman suicide bomber, and Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels were accused of ordering the killing, a charge the rebels denied.

It was seen as revenge for Gandhi sending Indian soldiers to the island nation as peacekeepers but who eventually got embroiled in the bloody ethnic conflict there.

While the charismatic Priyanka, married with two children, has stayed away from politics, her elder brother is being talked about as a potential prime minister.

Indian media reported that Priyanka met Nalini for an hour and asked her why her father, a "good person", was killed. She also wanted to know more details about the murder.

"I do not believe in anger, hatred and violence and I refuse to allow it any power over my life," she said in the statement. (Editing by Mark Williams and Alex Richardson)

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