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Congress MP Manish Tewari backs clemency for Beant Singh assassin Rajoana
On Tuesday, Congress MP and Beant Singh’s grandson Ravneet Singh Bittu had said that granting clemency to Rajoana “would send a very wrong message and embolden the country’s enemies”
A day after his party colleague and fellow Lok Sabha member Ravneet Singh Bittu urged the government not to release former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh’s assassin Balwant Singh Rajoana, Congress leader Manish Tewari on Wednesday backed clemency for the death-row convict who has been in prison for 26 years.
“Release him from prison invoking Section 432 (power to suspend or remit sentences) of the CrPC. Criminal jurisprudence of incarceration needs to be grounded in reformation and not retribution,” the Anandpur Sahib MP shared on Twitter.
On Tuesday, Ludhiana MP and Beant Singh’s grandson Ravneet Singh Bittu had said that granting clemency to Rajoana “would send a very wrong message and embolden the country’s enemies”. He was reacting to Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) chief Sukhbir Singh Badal’s request to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention for the Rajoana release.
Tewari wrote on Twitter that being a terror victim, he understood the anguish of his colleague Ravneet Bittu, but as a lawyer and MP from Punjab, “it is my considered view that Balwant Singh Rajoana having served 26 years in prison his death sentence be commuted to life and he be released (sic)”.
Akalis reiterate demand for release
Meanwhile, the SAD on Wednesday reiterated its demand, and slammed Bittu for letting a “personal family matter” come in the way of Rajoana’s release.
Akali leader Maheshinder Singh Grewal, while addressing a press conference in Ludhiana, appealed to the PM to release Rajoana on Guru Teg Bahadur’s Parkash Purb, claiming that it will go a long way in “healing Sikh wounds and help the cause of peace and communal harmony in Punjab”.
He said the Union government had approved commuting the life sentence of nine Sikh prisoners, including Rajoana, on 550th Parkash Purb of Guru Nanak in 2019, and it was “unfortunate” that this notification was not implemented till now.
“Earlier, the death sentence of Rajoana was stayed after the SGPC filed a petition to thwart his hanging, which was slated for March 30, 2012. Following this, his mercy petition was sent to the President and is still awaiting a decision. Now, even the Supreme Court has directed the Centre to decide on the petition by April 30,” said Grewal.
Rajoana was awarded death sentence in July 2007, after being convicted for his involvement in an explosion outside the Punjab civil secretariat that had killed Beant Singh and 16 others on August 31, 1995.
