Eighteen years on, the killer of Punjab’s “assassinated” Chief Minister Beant Singh is yet to be hanged.
Awarded death sentence by Chandigarh Sessions Court on July 31, 2007, and confirmed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on October 12, 2010, the prime conspirator in Beant Singh assassination case - Balwant Singh Rajoana, is still awaiting his death. Facing gallows for killing the then Chief Minister Beant Singh in a bomb blast at Punjab civil secretariat, Balwant Singh was second human bomb in case Dilawar Singh, the human bomb, failed to complete the task.
Even as the last legal hurdle on his way to the gallows have been removed only recently by a Patiala court, his death sentence is still in a state of suspended animation as a plea seeking his mercy, filed by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), is lying pending with the President. Seeking Rajoana’s clemency on the plea that his cases were pending in various courts and also to save Punjab’s hard-earned peace, the state government headed by Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has, even now, ruled out any possibility of hanging the condemned militant. The government is now banking on “pending” mercy plea in the President’s office.
Only recently, the Patiala local court had awarded two-and-a-half year imprisonment besides Rs 1,000 fine in an 18-year-old Arms Act case, apparently clearing the last legal hurdle in Rajoana’s road to the gibbet. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had clarified that the state government is not planning to shift Rajoana from Patiala jail to some other jail, as claimed by him during the court hearing, and start the process of his hanging.
Badal had also cited “the pending petition of the other convicts in the Supreme Court” as a reason for not going ahead with his execution - as of now. Unlike the expectations that Rajoana’s fate would not hang in balance for long with the President Paranab Mukherjee rejecting mercy pleas of Mumbai terror attack’s sole surviving assassin Ajmal Kasab, and Parliament terror attack convict Afzal Guru, the move, seems to be, delayed on account of political pressure to keep him alive, and also in the wake of vote bank politics ahead lok Sabha polls.
Escaping a death by a whisker, Rajoana was to be hanged on March 31, 2012. Even as the ‘condemned man’ wanted the death warrants to be executed and resisting any sort of clemency, the state government, SGPC, Sikh organizations and others left no stone unturned to secure life for him. To save him, the “Save Rajoana” campaign reached every Sikh’s house, that eventually proved fortunate for him with the Union Home Ministry staying his execution - just three days before his execution date - after the SGPC’s filed clemency appeal on March 28, with the President.
“It is mainly for the peace of Punjab, that has been after many sacrifices. It is good not to rake up this issue over and again. The law would take its own course. Till the SGPC’s clemency petition, filed on Rajoana’s behalf, is pending, nothing is going to happen. We are against death penalty to anyone,” a senior Akali leader told The Pioneer, on the condition of anonymity.
He added that the “conviction and Patiala court verdict are entirely different things. One case is pending with the Supreme Court where one of the co-accused had filed a petition seeking reduction in quantum of his sentence while the other is a mercy petition…and we have to wait for decision in both cases”.
Balwant Singh Rajoana, who has all along been admitting for eliminating the then Chief Minister and clamoring for the execution of the death sentence, had been conferred with the title of ‘Zinda Shaheed’ (a living martyr) by the Akal Takht - Sikhs’ highest temporal seat. The move was not opposed by the SAD-led Punjab government.