India's Supreme Court on Friday cleared the way for the execution of Sikh militant Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar

India's Supreme Court has rejected a petition by a death row prisoner to commute his sentence to life in jail.

The petition was filed by Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar on the basis that there had been "an inordinate delay" in deciding his mercy plea.

He has been on death row since August 2001 for a 1993 attack in Delhi which killed nine. His plea, filed in 2002, was denied by the president in 2011.

The landmark ruling is likely to have a bearing on several other similar cases.

There are 17 prisoners on death row whose mercy pleas have been rejected.

3 convicts on death row for the assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and four associates of the notorious bandit Veerappan have also approached the Supreme Court to commute their death sentences on similar grounds.

Until recently, executions were rarely carried out in India, but in the last few months, India has carried out two hangings.

Mohammed Ajmal Qasab, the sole surviving attacker from the 2008 Mumbai attacks, was executed in November in a prison in the western city of Pune.

And in February, a Kashmiri man, Afzal Guru, was sentenced to death for the 2001 attack on India's parliament, was hanged in Delhi's Tihar jail.

Source: BBC News, April 13, 2013

Court rejects challenge to death sentence

India's Supreme Court on Friday cleared the way for the execution of a Sikh militant, rejecting his appeal in a ruling that could lead to more death sentences being carried out.

Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar from northwestern Punjab, who was convicted over a New Delhi car bombing that killed 9 people in 1993, had appealed for his sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment on the grounds that he had spent 2 decades on death row.

He also challenged the right of the state to execute mentally ill convicts, claiming he had developed psychological problems while languishing in prison, including schizophrenia.

A Supreme Court bench ruled that neither his lengthy wait in prison nor his apparent mental problems were reasons to set aside the death sentence.

"The petitioner has not been able to make out a case for commuting his sentence," Justice G.S. Singhvi said, reading out the judgement.

The ruling was being followed by more than a dozen other prisoners whose executions have also been held up for decades, including 3 men convicted over the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

"After this judgement, India will have to resume execution including of 17 death row convicts who had filed petitions before the courts on the grounds of delay," said Suhas Chakma of the New Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights.

"India must decide whether it wants the tag of the top 5 executioners of the world along with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq," Chakma said in a statement.

Indian courts hand down death sentences for the "rarest of rare" crimes but the country had not carried out an execution for 8 years until last November when it put to death the only surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Another militant convicted for his role in an attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 was executed in February after his appeal for clemency was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee.

Mukherjee, who took office in July last year, has signalled a hard line on the death penalty by regularly dismissing mercy pleas - unlike his 3 predecessors.

More than 400 people are on death row in India.

Navneet Kaur, the 48-year-old wife of Bhullar who was present in the courtroom, said she was disappointed by the order.

"We waited for so long... we have suffered so much. The court did not consider our point, it has not been fair with us," she told India's NDTV news channel.

Bhullar was awarded the death penalty in 2001 for carrying out a bomb blast in Delhi in 1993 that killed nine people and injured several others, including prominent youth Congress leader M.S. Bitta.

An ideologue of the Sikh separatist militant group Khalistan Liberation Force, Bhullar was also suspected of being involved in a 1991 bomb blast in the northern Indian city of Amritsar.

He fled to Germany in 1994 but was deported a year later to India to face charges of terrorism.

The main political parties welcomed the court's judgement with the ruling Congress saying the "entire country would accept this order" and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) calling it a just verdict.

Source: Khaleej Times, April 13, 2013

SC rejects Bhullar's plea for commuting death penalty to life term on grounds of delay

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed condemned prisoner and Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) terrorist Devinderpal Singh Bhullar's plea for commutation of his death sentence to life imprisonment on ground of delay in deciding his mercy plea.

Delivering the verdict in a packed court room, a bench of justices GS Singhvi and SJ Mukhopadhaya said that the petitioners failed to make out a case for commutation of sentence.

The SC bench ruled that neither his lengthy wait in prison nor his apparent mental problems were reasons to set aside the death sentence.

"The petitioner has not been able to make out a case for commuting his sentence," Justice GS Singhvi said, reading out the judgement.

Today's decision will pave the way for his hanging and is likely to have an impact on 17 other convicts on the death row including those held guilty in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

48-year-old Bhullar's Canada-based wife, Navneet Kaur, who was present in the court when the bench read out at 11.15 am two sentences of the operative portion of their verdict, looked dejected and refused to respond to questions from reporters as she left the court premises.

The apex court bench had reserved its order on April 19 last year on the issue on a plea of Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) terrorist Devinderpal Singh Bhullar's family which had filed a petition on his behalf pleading that his capital punishment be commuted to life imprisonment as there has been "inordinate" delay in deciding his mercy plea and he is not mentally sound.

It was submitted that prolonged incarceration of a death row convict awaiting his/her execution amounted to cruelty and violated the fundamental right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution.

Bhullar was awarded death penalty for triggering a bomb blast here in September 1993, killing nine people and injuring 25 others, including then Youth Congress president M S Bitta.

The Supreme Court had on March 26, 2002, dismissed Bhullar's appeal against the death sentence awarded by trial court and endorsed by the Delhi high court.

He had filed a review petition which was also dismissed on December 17, 2002. Bhullar had then moved a curative petition which too had been rejected by the apex court on March 12, 2003.

The ruling was being followed by more than a dozen other prisoners whose executions have also been held up for decades, including three men convicted over the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

The courts hand down death sentences for the "rarest of rare" crimes but the country had not carried out an execution for eight years until last November when it put to death the only surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Another militant convicted for his role in an attack on the parliament in 2001 was executed in February after his appeal for clemency was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee.

Mukherjee, who took office in July last year, has signalled a hard line on the death penalty by regularly dismissing mercy pleas -- unlike his three predecessors.

More than 400 people are on death row in India.

Source: Hindustan Times, April 13, 2013