Supreme Court to Hear Bhullar’s Petition Against Death on Jan 31

Prof. Bhullar
Prof. Bhullar

NEW DELHI—The Supreme Court of India on Tuesday decided to hear the petition by Professor Davinder Pal Singh Bhullar—a victim of India’s brutality—for commutation of death penalty to life imprisonment in an open Court on January 31, 2014.

The punishment was handed down to him for a September 1993 bombing that he was not involved in. The decision to hear the case was made in the wake of the court’s recent judgment delivered on Jan 21 that gave relief to 15 such convicts.

A Supreme Court of India bench chaired by Chief Justice P Sathasivam ordered: “List in the open court at 10:30am on January 31” considering the curative petition filed by Prof. Bhullar’s wife Navneet Kaur. Justice RM Lodha, Justice HL Dattu and Justice SJ Mukopadhyaya were the other members of the bench.

The apex court on January 21 had held that an inordinate delay on the part of the government in deciding a mercy petition for death sentence convicts can be a grounds for commuting their sentence.

Secondly, the Court said that the death sentence of a prisoner cannot be executed if he is suffering from mental illness and schizophrenia and must be commuted to life imprisonment.

Thirdly, SC said every person on death row, whether convicted for multiple murders or terrorism cases, will have a right to approach the Supreme Court to challenge the rejection of their mercy petitions on the grounds of inordinate delay in deciding the mercy plea. In the wake of all these points of the verdict, Bhullar’s wife filed the petition for a re-look against its own verdict which had dismissed her plea to commute his sentence to life imprisonment previously.

The apex court had on March 26, 2002 rejected Prof.  Bhullar’s appeal against the death sentence awarded by a trial court in August 2001 and endorsed by the Delhi high court in 2002.

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

Prof. Bhullar, meanwhile, had filed a mercy petition before the President on January 14, 2003.

The President, after a lapse of over eight years, dismissed his mercy plea on May 14, 2011. Citing the delay, he had again moved the apex court for commutation of the death sentence but his plea was rejected.

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