As Sikhs all over the world were preparing to commemorate the 27th anniversary of the genocidal attack on Sikh shrines carried out by the Indian Army in June of 1984, they found themselves rudely awoken on the morning of May 26, 2011 with another tragic news.
The Indian media enthusiastically carried news of the Indian President’s go-ahead to the execution of Devinderpal Singh Bhullar. The clemency petition filed for Devinderpal Singh's life was inclemently denied.
For readers unfamiliar with the case, Devinderpal Singh Bhullar (also known as Prof. Bhullar) was charged and convicted for a 1993 car bomb blast in New Delhi targeted at the then Youth Congress leader, M.S.Bitta, that had killed 9 other people. Bitta escaped with minor injuiries.
This is not the first or the last state execution of a Sikh that India will commit. So why is this one important?
Over the years, Devinderpal Singh and his case have become iconic of the ability (or lack thereof) of Sikhs to speak up for their judicial rights in India. Saving him from the death sentence unjustly conferred upon him, especially in this day and age of media-led revolutions, should not have been difficult because there is clearly no case against him.
After all, India prides itself in being the largest democracy in the world. In any civilized country in the world, proof beyond reasonable doubt is necessary to convict a person, especially to send him to the gallows.
Not in India.
Everything about Devinderpal's case is disturbing.
Disturbing, because not only will another judiciary murder happen in India, but it will happen in the name of justice - justice that neither Devinderpal nor his family ever had the right or chance to. Justice that hundreds of thousands of Sikhs have not received in recent memory.
Disturbing, because there is a criminal named Sumedh Saini, the then Superintendent of Punjab Police, responsible for the abduction, torture and elimination of Devinderpal’s father, uncle, and friend (and several others) because Saini suspected Devinderpal's involvement in an attack on him. Instead of being charged and tried for his crimes, Saini was promoted to the position of Director-Vigilance, Punjab.
Disturbing, because there are several incarnations of Sumedh Saini who continue to enjoy free license to kill in the name of curbing the Khalistan insurgency and have been given total impunity for their actions - and rewarded with high-profile government posts and honors by both the Congress and Akali governments.
But what is beyond disturbing and unbearable is the helplessness that Sikhs find themselves in every time India hangs one of ours on the noose to make a statement, or kills one in a fake encounter, or worse - when, on the global stage, the crimes against the innocents are justified as curbing terrorism and the perpetrators of the mass killings and disappearances are venerated as the face of anti-terror.
Devinderpal’s case is one where even a layman can see that the death sentence given to him is a travesty of justice, a blatant disregard to human decency.
He was tried by the designated court in Delhi in January of 1995 under TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act) for allegedly participating in the attack on Bitta. After facing six years of trial, he was sentenced to death by the designated judge on Aug 25, 2001. His sentence was based on a "confession" by Devinderpal purportedly recorded by a Deputy Police Commissioner during the police remand. This "confession" was recanted at the first opportunity by Devinderpal as a confession obtained by coercion and torture.
To begin with, there is nothing right about TADA, under which Devinderpal was tried and convicted and under which the alleged confession was made admissible as an evidence. TADA was repealed in May 1995 (years before the guilty verdict) after immense international pressure from the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, being termed as ‘draconian’.
Further, Devinderpal's conviction under TADA was wrong on another ground, his alleged crime of conspiring to assassinate Bitta should have been tried on the charge of "attempted murder", not as an "act of terrorism" as per definition and scope of the Act.
None of the 133 eye-witnesses produced by the prosecution identified Devinderpal as being present at the crime scene or planting a bomb in the car. There was no evidence to connect him with the crime, except for the alleged ‘confession’.
A second defendant in the case was acquitted on the same charges, in the same trial, because the only evidence against him was Devinderpal's "confession" - the very same one on the strength of which Devinderpal himself was convicted.
Furthermore, this ‘confession’ was said to have been recorded on a computer and was never produced in the court.
In the Supreme Court appeal of his case in 2002, the presiding judge on the bench, Justice M.B. Shah acquitted him of all the charges in a dissenting judgment, stating that too much doubt remained on the authenticity of the alleged ‘confession’ to the police.
"It is trite to say that one person alone can ever be held guilty of criminal conspiracy for the simple reason that one cannot conspire with oneself," Shah had ruled.
But the two other judges, Justice B.N. Aggarwal and Justice A. Pasayat, upheld the death sentence. The case failed to qualify for capital punishment because of the requirement that the sentence be unanimously hels by all the judges.
Devinderpal became the first person in independent India to be condemned to death on a split verdict by a Supreme Court bench.
Since January 1995, Devinderpal has spent 16 long years in Indian prisons, and since August 2001, the day of his conviction, much of the time has been spent in solitary confinement. Out of the 24 hours of each a day, he has spent 22 hours in his 7 x 9 feet cell in Tihar jail, a torture that has driven him insane. Today he suffers with severe mental and physical ailments.
After dismissal of his curative petition on Dec 19, 2002, the clemency petition was filed on his behalf by his lawyer with the President of India on January 14, 2003.
After eight long years of sitting on it, it was finally declined on May 25, 2011, and the President of India has given the go-ahead for his execution.
It didn’t matter to the President that the Constitution of India admits a very important fundamental right to everyone, i.e., protection against double jeopardy. One cannot be punished for the same offence twice. Devinderpal has already undergone a rigorous imprisonment for sixteen years of his life, including ten years in solitary confinement. At this stage, rendering capital punishment would mean awarding death penalty after undergoing life imprisonment.
This degree of punishment is not acceptable in any civilized society in the world today.
Even a layman who is not familiar with intricacies of law will agree that Bhullar should have been a free man today.
But that is not what the Indian media is talking about. Talk shows are debating why was there such a delay in hearing of appeals made by a "deadly terrorist" with alleged links to the Khalistan Liberation Force.
Not many are talking about the wrongful conviction or that Devinderpal has already served more than a full life-imprisonment term, enduring the entire period in torture. No one is talking about his wife Navneet Kaur, who after only a couple of months of marriage, was isolated from her husband and who still awaits his return. No one is talking about his mother, Upkar Kaur, whose husband, brother and son were cruelly snatched away from her by the state. And, no one is talking about one man on whose whims all of this befell on the family - Sumedh Saini.
Devinderpal’s lawyer, K.T.S. Tulsi, has not given up hope. Paramjit Singh of the Delhi Gurdwara Management Committee who has lobbied for Devinderpal so far, providing him with legal aid, has vowed to keep fighting for his life in spite of the latest setback. His political clout has helped keep Devinderpal's story in the limelight to date.
But there is another ray of hope, a power that has not been tapped, that lies with the diaspora.
This angle drew some international action but not nearly enough. In December, 1994, Devinderpal - fearing elimination by the police through torture or a fake encounter much like his father, uncle and friend, decided to escape from India. While at Frankfurt airport in Germany, he was taken in custody on suspicion of forged documents and after remaining with German authorities for a month, he was deported to India in January,1995. He was arrested and charged with carrying a false passport.
While he was in police custody, with no access to a lawyer or his relatives, he was forced to make the confession for plotting the attack, which later resulted in his capital punishment.
This deportation was later recognized by a German court ruling as having been made by ‘grave procedural errors’. Now, since Germany should not have extradited or deported someone to his or her native country where they could be subject to a death penalty - Germany and other European countries do not condone capital punishment - upon delivery of the death sentence to Devinderpal, Germany should have intervened and asked for his return, especially in the light of the ‘grave procedural error’ it had committed and admitted.
But that never happened. The reason – a lack of global Sikh leadership which failed to wield an effective international lobby for the cause.
So, in essence, Devinderpal Singh Bhullar will see the gallows because of a ‘grave procedural error’ that was never corrected, a confession extracted under torture as the sole evidence against him, and the belief held by two Indian Supreme Court judges that "proof beyond reasonable doubt" should be a "guideline, not a fetish".
With all the facts laid out before us, the question today is not ‘What is wrong with India?’ but ‘What is wrong with us? ’
Why have the Sikhs worldwide not been able to fight for Devinderpal and many others languishing in Indian jails - some for more than quarter of a century?
Many organizations have come and withered away, but none have had the longevity and muscle to carry out the vision of creating an international movement that could save Devinderpal and similar innocent victims from the clutches of the draconian Indian "justice" system.
Devinderpal's father who "disappeared" while in police custody, was a Section Officer of the Punjab Audit Department and his mother a Supervisor in the Rural Development Department of Punjab. Devinderpal himself was young Lecturer in the Guru Nanak Engineering College, Ludhiana, where he had completed a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1990. His maternal uncle, Manjit Singh Sohi, another victim of state murder, and who he lived with for several of his school years, was an officer with the Reserve Bank of India.
If an educated family with such high visibility had to face such grave injustice, one can only imagine the status of thousands of others. Who is even bothering to look at the condition of village youth who were picked up on false allegations and are still languishing in prisons without any convictions or cases against them? Who will give closure to thousands of mothers still awaiting their sons?
Who will prosecute Sumedh Saini for his crimes?
The clock is ticking.
We need to act now.
This June of 2011 offers the opportunity for us to come out of our comfortable cocoons and take wings. Wings, not like an individual butterfly that flutters for a day before disappearing, but like migratory butterflies that reach a destination as a group, albeit living and dying individually.
June 8, 2011
Please go to and sign the petition: http://www.prisonerwelfare.com/category/news/
Write a letter to your local MP - you can get a draft copy from the Sikh Federation website - http://www.sikhfederation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=174:save-professor-davinderpal-singh-bhullar-campaign&catid=35:news
To find who your local MP is and how to contact them go onto: www.writetothem.com
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