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Beant Singh assassination: SC puts off hearing on Hawara’s jail transfer plea
A bench of chief justice B R Gavai and justice Vijay Bishnoi adjourned the matter after briefly hearing submissions. The petition, which came up before the court earlier on September 27 last year, had led the bench to issue notices to the Centre, the Chandigarh administration, and the Delhi and Punjab governments.
The Supreme Court on Friday deferred for two weeks the hearing on a plea filed by Babbar Khalsa terrorist Jagtar Singh Hawara, who is serving life term for the 1995 assassination of former chief minister Beant Singh. Hawara has sought his transfer from Delhi’s Tihar jail to a prison in Punjab.
A bench of chief justice B R Gavai and justice Vijay Bishnoi adjourned the matter after briefly hearing submissions. The petition, which came up before the court earlier on September 27 last year, had led the bench to issue notices to the Centre, the Chandigarh administration, and the Delhi and Punjab governments.
Hawara is undergoing life imprisonment for his role in the August 31, 1995 blast at the entrance of the Punjab civil secretariat in Chandigarh, which killed Singh and 16 others. A trial court had sentenced him to death in 2007, but the Punjab and Haryana High Court commuted his sentence to life imprisonment in 2010, ordering that he remain in jail for the rest of his life. Appeals filed by both sides are still pending in the apex court.
The fresh plea, moved through advocate Satya Mitra, argues that Hawara should be lodged in a Punjab prison as he has no pending case in Delhi, is a native of Punjab’s Fatehgarh Sahib district, and is legally governed by Punjab’s prison rules. It also requests that the authorities place on record his complete conduct history during incarceration.
Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, appearing for Hawara, said the prisoner’s record has been clean for nearly two decades, except for the 2004 jailbreak. The bench questioned the defence about the escape, asking, “How were you (Hawara) successful in digging a tunnel?” Gonsalves responded that the incident occurred 20 years ago and Hawara’s conduct since re-arrest has been without blemish.
The plea claims that 36 cases were registered against Hawara following Singh’s assassination and that he has been acquitted in all but one. It also notes that another convict in the same case, who was part of the jailbreak, has already been shifted to a Chandigarh jail.
Citing humanitarian grounds, the petition says Hawara’s daughter lives in Punjab, his wife has passed away, and his mother is in a coma in the United States. It argues that the earlier “high-risk” designation is no longer sufficient reason to keep him confined in Delhi.
