Justice delayed may actually come to Khalistani militant Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar’s rescue.The condemned prisoner may escape the gallows after all, with the Supreme Court on Tuesday commuting death penalty of 15 convicts to life sentence on the grounds of long-hanging death sentence.
But the landmark judgment, overruling its own verdict in Bhullar’s case, may not come to another militant Balwant Singh’s rescue as the Apex Court ruled that execution of death sentence should be carried out only 14 days after rejection of the mercy plea. In Balwant Singh’s case, the mercy petition is still pending before the President.
The legal eagles believed that Bhullar is likely to be spared from the hangman’s rope. “It is most likely that death-row convict Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar’s death penalty would also be commuted to life sentence,” said senior advocate HS Phoolka.
The apex court has ruled that the “delay in deciding on mercy petitions justifies commuting a convict’s death sentence to life”….adding that the “death sentence of a condemned prisoner cannot be executed if he is suffering from mental illness and schizophrenia and must be commuted to life imprisonment.”
The 15 death row inmates on whose pleas the apex court delivered its verdict are sandalwood smuggler Veerappan’s aides, former Haryana MlA Ralu Ram Punia’s daughter Sonia and her husband Sanjeev, among others.
Bhullar’s wife Navneet Kaur has long been waging a legal battle to get his sentence commuted claiming that he was a psychiatric patient and has already suffered because of delay in deciding his mercy petition.
Since 2010, Bhullar, who is currently lodged at Delhi’s Tihar Jail, is being treated at the Institute for Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences in Delhi.
Bhullar’s mercy plea was rejected the then president Pratibha Patil on May 26, 2011, following which, the “Clemency for Bhullar” campaign gained ground with Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC), World Sikh Organisation of Canada, lawyers for Human Rights International and other organisations backing mercy for Bhullar.
That time witnessed the politicians and others activists from Punjab transcending political and social lines to support Bhullar, personally, on web world and through critical statements. Even the two arch rivals, SAD and the Congress, have also come on the same platform.
Taking the ground of “eight-year delay” in deciding his mercy plea, Bhullar had challenged the presidential order, contending that “long torturous wait” has made him mentally unsound, and thus, “cannot be hanged” in such a state, but was turned down by the Apex Court on April 12, 2013.
Bhullar was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court for triggering a bomb blast near Youth Congress of India office in New Delhi in 1993 where nine persons were killed and 29 injured, including the then national Youth Congress president Maninderjit Singh Bitta, now chairman of the All-India Anti-Terrorist Front (AIATF).
The mercy petitions of another militant Balwant Singh Rajoana — facing gallows for assassinating the then Chief Minister Beant Singh in August 1995 — is also lying pending with the President. The plea was filed by the Punjab Government in March 2012, days before Rajoana was to hang, after entire Punjab and Sikh community stood united seeking clemency for him a few days ahead of his execution.