The Supreme Court docket on Wednesday declined to commute Babbar Khalsa terrorist Balwant Singh Rajoana’s demise sentence to life imprisonment, leaving it for the Union authorities to contemplate his mercy plea in reference to former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh’s assassination in 1995.
A bench led by Justice BR Gavai famous that the delay by the ministry of dwelling affairs (MHA) in deciding Rajoana’s mercy plea could be construed as its disinclination to commute his sentence.
The bench, which included justices Vikram Nath and Sanjay Karol, held the MHA might contemplate the request once more at an applicable time.
The Supreme Court docket on March 2 reserved its verdict on a petition filed by Rajoana in 2020 for commuting his punishment in view of a communication issued by the MHA in September 2019 to Punjab for commuting his demise sentence to a life time period coinciding with the 550th delivery anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev.
Rajoana, a former Punjab Police constable, was convicted for his involvement in an explosion outdoors the Punjab civil secretariat that killed Beant Singh and 16 others in 1995.
A particular courtroom in July 2007 awarded the demise sentence to Rajoana, together with one other terrorist Jagtar Singh Hawara, within the assassination case. Rajoana was the second human bomb in case the primary one would have failed in killing the Congress chief. Rajoana was scheduled to be hanged on March 31, 2012.
The execution was stayed on March 28, 2012, by the then Congress-led authorities on the Centre after the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), a Sikh spiritual physique, filed a mercy petition with the President. The Shiromani Akali Dal, which was then in energy in Punjab, additionally campaigned in opposition to his execution.
The President at the moment forwarded the mercy plea to the MHA. Since then, the petition has been pending.
Throughout hearings earlier than the highest courtroom, the bench questioned the delay in a call on Rajoana’s mercy plea someway.
However the Union authorities and the Central Bureau of Investigation, which investigated the 1995 assassination case, opposed Rajoana’s plea on the grounds that he by no means filed any mercy plea himself and that such representations solely got here from organisations such because the SGPC
It added that the President is the ultimate authority within the matter, arguing that the September 2019 resolution by MHA won’t confer any proper on the petitioner because it was not a last resolution.
The Union authorities added any resolution on his clemency should await the end result of the enchantment filed by co-accused Hawara pending earlier than the Supreme Court docket.
Representing Rajoana, senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi, emphasised his consumer was entitled to commutation in mild of the 2019 communication and since he has been on demise row for 15 years and incarcerated for 26 years.
He cited the case of one other terror case convict Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, whose life time period was commuted by the Supreme Court docket in 2014 over an inordinate delay by the federal government in deciding his mercy plea.