New Delhi (June 13, 2011): Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam, a Tamil Nadu based Political party, has severely condemned the rejection of the clemency petition of Punjab Professor Davindar Pal Singh Bhullar by President Pratiba Patil on May 25th. The Indian home ministry had given recommendation for this move.
Prof. Davindar Pal Singh Bhullar (47) was arrested under TADA and has been in prison for the past 16 years.
In 1991, under suspicion of involvement in the murder of a police official in Chandigarh, the police were hunting him and his friends. Bhullar went missing. The police then unlawfully detained his father, father-in-law and friend, tortured them and killed them in custody. Two years later in 1993, there was a bomb attack on the car of a Youth Congress leader in New Delhi. The Congress leader escaped with injuries. His guards were killed.
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The police who were hunting Bhullar in the Chandigarh case, pinned this case also on him. When the Khalistan liberation struggle was intense in the years of 1980’s and 1990s, the police force was vehemently targetting Sikh youth. Many innocents were killed. Given the circumstances, to avoid being caught by this police, Bhullar sought to go to Canada. After being caught in Germany and spending a month in Prison for charges of traveling with a fake passport, Bhullar was sent to India with the consent of the German govt. He was booked under TADA and interrogated. Using only the confession retracted under torture, the death sentance was awarded to him. Those who were arrested along with him were acquitted. How can only one person be booked in a conspiracy case? Also, of the three-member bench of the Supreme Court that heard this case, Justice M.B. Shah called for the acquittal of Bhullar. The death sentence was passed with the consent of the other two judges.
When a person arrested in Germany has been deported and tried in India, it is not permissible under German laws to allow death penalty. Bhullar, who has been for the past 16 years in solitude for 22 hours a day, has had severe psychological damage and has been recieving treatment from a psychiatric hospital in New Delhi. Hence, there was an appeal to the supreme court to commute his death sentence to life, and the supreme court placed the matter before the central govt. In this stage, the home ministry advised the President to reject the mercy petition. This appears only to seek revenge. Not one of those involved in the massacre of over 3000 Sikhs in New Delhi in 1984 were punished. If a judgment based on the barbaric TADA act, that forces an accussed to bear witness against himself, is used to execute this death penalty, then the Indian judiciary shall bow its heads in shame in front of the world community. Human rights activists should condemn this move severely.
The rejection of the mercy petitions that have been pending for ages is condemnable. Such moves should be stopped and Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam strongly expresses its opposition.