loosing no time, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Thursday made another attempt to save the Khalistani militant Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar from the gallows.
Six days after the Supreme Court rejected Bhullar’s plea to commute his death penalty to life imprisonment, SAD’s high-powered delegation met President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday demanding to pardon the 1993 bomb blast accused for the sake of “hard-earned communal harmony and peace in Punjab and the rest of India”.
Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, along with his deputy son and SAD chief Sukhbir Badal had on Monday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde in connection with Bhullar’s case.
Shinde later maintained that the Government is considering the plea seeking commutation of Bhullar’s death sentence on the basis that it had taken too long to be carried out.
Apprehending that Bhullar’s execution may create serious law and order problem in the State, the delegation led by Badal handed over a memorandum to the President urging his “immediate personal intervention” for seeking clemency to Bhullar. The delegation also apprehended that the execution may also give fresh breeding ground to the people who were averse to the idea of peace and communal harmony in the State.
Maintaining that the “main stress is on communal harmony”, the delegation urged that the death sentence “requires reconsideration as it would not only meet the ends of justice by saving his life from gallows but would further save Punjab from being again in a State of turmoil”.
SAD maintained that Bhullar’s case is not the ‘rarest of the rare’, and therefore, the Supreme Court’s verdict upholding the death sentence awarded by the designated TADA court to Bhullar is reviewed, and that he be “acquitted in the interest of justice”. Talking grounds of the “dissenting view” of one of the judge of the Supreme Court, the delegation claimed that the extreme punishment of death awarded to the accused should be converted to the life imprisonment in such case.
“In this case, death penalty on the accused has been confirmed by 2:1 majority as one of the Minority Judge differed from the majority view with strong reasoning and high degree of legal acumen and have even gone to the extent of acquitting the accused….it had opined that the President would keep in mind the view given by the Minority Judge,” stated the memorandum.
The delegation submitted that people of Punjab were angered as the guilty persons of November 1984 anti-Sikh riots were moving scot-free notwithstanding voluminous evidence against them, Bhullar, against whom there was no evidence, was being given death penalty and that too based upon the split verdict.
The delegation apprised, “The principal accused in 1993 bomb blast case, Daya Singh lahoria, was acquitted on the same set of evidence whereas Bhullar was sentenced to death for helping him….On the principal of parity, Bhullar is also liable to be acquitted.”
“There is no evidence or witness against Bhullar, and he has been convicted purely on the basis of uncorroborated confessional statement recorded by DCP under Section 15 of the TADA Act,” it added.
Giving another ground for mercy, the delegation highlighted that Bhullar was extradited from Germany, and the German law does not permit a sentence of death to be passed in any circumstance as the death penalty has been abolished in that country.
They highlighted “prolonged incarceration and suffering of Bhullar along with his various psychiatric illness and suicidal tendencies”. Pointing out at “other technical points”, Badal said: “There is a law that when somebody is very, very sick, he should not be hanged. For the last two-and-a-half years, he has been very sick.”
The petition submitted by the SAD stated that Bhullar is not in a fit state of mind. The Ministry of External Affairs, it said, had suggested commutation of his death sentence. Bhullar has been in custody for the last 17 years.
The delegation further urged the President that scores of other representations have been made to him by the Canadian and German Governments pleading against the death sentence inflicted upon Bhullar which also should be given due weightage.
“Delegations of responsible citizens have also called on the Ministers of the government to make the same plea adding that hundreds of representations have been received in his office from all parts of the world,” it added.
likewise the delegation said that Former Prime Ministers of India HD Deve Gowda, late Chander Sekhar and late VP Singh had also made an appeal in writing because all these persons believed in Bhullar’s innocence and the injustice of condemning him to death.
'Justice March’ to Rashtrapati Bhavan begins
‘Justice March’, seeking clemency for Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar was flagged off from Mohali to Fatehgarh Sahib on Thursday. It would join other groups of Sikh community on their way to Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi. Various organisations would hand over a resolution to President Pranab Mukherjee with 75,000 signatures, pleading clemency for Bhullar.