On 4th November, the Supreme Court will take up a plea filed by Khalistani terrorist and Beant Singh assassination case convict, Balwant Singh Rajoana, seeking commutation of his death sentence to life imprisonment. Rajoana has filed the petition for commutation on the grounds that the Government of India has taken an “inordinate delay” in deciding his mercy petition.
Rajoana was convicted of assassinating the then-Chief Minister of Punjab, Beant Singh, in 1995. Rajoana is a former Punjab Police constable. He has been in prison for the past 28 years awaiting his execution. On 31st August 1995, Beant Singh and 16 others were killed in a blast outside the Civil Secretariat in Chandigarh. Rajoana was arrested and tried in the matter as one of the suspects. He was sentenced to death in 2007 by a special court. His mercy petition has been pending for more than 12 years.
In May 2023, the apex court refused to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment. The court had asked the Central Government to take a decision on his mercy petition “as and when it is deemed necessary”. Sixteen months later, the court, however, agreed to hear the matter afresh. The case will be heard by a three-judge bench led by Justice BR Gavai. The bench had asked the Centre and the Punjab Government to respond to his fresh petition for commutation of the death sentence on the grounds of delay in deciding his mercy petition, which was filed on 25th March 2012.
The Bench, comprising Justice BR Gavai, Justice PK Mishra, and Justice KV Vishwanathan, will hear the petition. In May last year, the apex court had said, “The stand of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to defer the decision on the mercy petition of the petitioner is also a decision for the reasons given thereunder. It actually amounts to a decision declining to grant the same for the present.” However, it had directed “that the competent authority, in due course of time, would again, as and when it is deemed necessary, may deal with the mercy petition, and take a further decision.”
In his fresh petition, Rajoana has argued, “About 01 year and 04 months have now elapsed since the disposal of the petitioner’s first writ petition, and a decision on his fate still hangs under a cloud of uncertainty, causing deep mental trauma and anxiety to the petitioner every single living day, which by itself is a sufficient ground for the exercise of this court’s Article 32 powers to allow the reliefs sought.”
Senior counsel Mukul Rohtagi is representing the convict. He contended that Rajoana has been in jail for over 28 years and on death row for 17 years; thus, he cannot be made to wait indefinitely on the grounds of national security. Earlier, he had argued that keeping him on death row while sitting over the mercy plea is a violation of Rajoana’s fundamental rights.
On the other hand, appearing for the Ministry of Home Affairs, Additional Solicitor General KM Natraj contended that the mercy petition filed by Rajoana cannot be considered as it was filed by SGPC and not by the convict himself. Furthermore, Natraj argued that the mercy petition of Rajoana cannot be decided until the appeals of other convicts are decided by the Supreme Court. Considering the circumstances, the MHA decided it would be appropriate not to take any decision on the mercy petition as it could potentially compromise national security and create a law and order situation.
Who is Balwant Singh Rajoana?
Balwant Singh Rajoana was a resident of Kalan village in Ludhiana district. He joined the Punjab Police as a constable on 1st October 1987. Rajoana was sympathetic to the views of the Khalistani terrorist organisation Babbar Khalsa International. He is one of the two assassins responsible for the killing of the then-Chief Minister of Punjab, Beant Singh. Justifying the assassination, Rajoana blamed Beant Singh for the “extra-judicial” killings of Sikh youth.
Babbar Khalsa International’s terrorist Dilawar Singh Babbar acted as the suicide bomber who carried out the attack on Beant Singh. Rajoana was the one who attached the bombs to Dilawar’s body. He was also the backup bomber, prepared to attempt the assassination himself if Dilawar had failed.
On 22nd and 23rd January 1996, Rajoana recorded his confession under Section 313 of the Criminal Procedure Code. He stated, “Judge Sahib, Beant Singh assumed himself [to be the] angel of peace after killing thousands of innocent people, compared himself with Guru Gobind Singh Ji and Ram Ji; thereafter, we had decided to kill Chief Minister Shri Beant Singh.”
He also expressed deep anguish over Operation Blue Star and the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, angered that the agencies and police were given “full liberty” to “kill” young, innocent Sikhs. He claimed that these atrocities were committed by the Punjab CM at the behest of “agencies of Delhi.”
Rajoana was arrested by the Punjab police in December 1995. A special CBI court in Chandigarh sentenced him to death on 27th July 2007. Along with him, the court also sentenced Jagtar Singh Hawara to death, while Gurmit Singh, Lakhwinder Singh, and Shamsher Singh received life imprisonment. Later, Hawara’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2010 after he appealed the trial court’s verdict.
Did Balwant SIngh Rajoana challenge the death penalty?
Interestingly, Rajoana never engaged a lawyer during the trial. He stated, “Yes, I was involved in this murder. I have no repentance for my involvement. I and Bhai Dilawar Singh prepared this bomb.” On 10th August 2009, he requested the Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court to consider his death penalty case separately from that of the co-accused who had appealed the conviction. Rajoana considered the death sentence “for this act is justice” and a blessing. He refused to “bow before a worthless system.”
In a letter to the High Court, he wrote, “How can I say that I am innocent, and why should I engage any advocate when my conscience does not allow me to do so?”
What happened thereafter?
Balwant Singh Rajoana was scheduled to be executed on 31st March 2012. However, there was public resentment and anger over the death sentence, prompting then-CM of Punjab Parkash Singh Badal to attempt to halt it. On 28th March 2012, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) filed a mercy petition before the President of India. In response, the Ministry of Home Affairs stayed the execution.
Irked by the delay in a decision on the mercy petition, Rajoana went on hunger strike twice in Patiala Central Jail in 2016 and 2018. He ended his five-day hunger strike in 2018 after SGPC president Gobind Singh Longowal assured him that his petition would be expedited.
What is the background of the latest Supreme Court order on mercy petition of Balwant Singh Rajoana?
On the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism, the Government of India in September 2019 decided to recommend cases of eight Sikh prisoners for special remission and release under Article 161 of the Constitution of India, delegating this to the respective states. Article 161 empowers the Governor of a state to commute death sentences to life imprisonment.
The Central Government also recommended processing Rajoana’s case for commutation of his death sentence under Article 72 of the Constitution, which gives the President of India the power to commute a death sentence to life imprisonment. The Union Home Ministry sent correspondence to this effect to the respective states/UTs in September 2019. However, in December 2019, Union Home Minister Amit Shah stated in the Lok Sabha that no pardon had been granted to Rajoana, after Congress Member of Parliament Ravneet Singh Bittu, the grandson of Beant Singh, questioned why “Rajoana was pardoned” during Question Hour.
In 2020, Balwant Singh Rajoana filed a Writ Petition (Criminal) seeking a directive for the expeditious disposal of the Ministry of Home Affairs’ proposal to commute his death sentence. Hearing this plea, the Supreme Court recently ordered that the mercy plea be decided within 14 days. Previously, in December last year, the court had questioned the Centre’s delay in forwarding a proposal regarding Rajoana’s death sentence to the President.
