Prof. Davinderpal Singh Bhullar To Remain Imprisoned for Now as Per Supreme Court Ruling

NEW DELHI—As per a ruling of Supreme Court that came out yesterday, seven assassins of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and other life convicts including Prof. Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar have to stay in jail. SCI has referred the issue of these convicts right to remissions in sentence to a Constitution bench.

A three-member bench headed by outgoing Chief Justice P Sathasivam and Justices Ranjan Gogoi and NV Ramana ruled, “A Constitution Bench comprising at least five judges would decide as to whether life imprisonment meant keeping the convicts in jail for the rest of their lives or they were entitled to remissions.”

The Constitution bench would also spell out the powers of the Governors and the President for granting remissions under Sections 432/433 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as both of them had parallel powers under Articles 72 and 161 of the Constitution, respectively.

SCI delivered on a plea filed by the government of India (GOI) challenging Tamil Nadu government’s hasty move to release immediately Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan following conversion of their death sentence to life term by the apex court due to the inordinate delay in the rejection of their mercy petitions. GOI also opposed the state’s decision to release another four life convicts – Jayakumar, Robert Payas, P Racichandran and S Nalini – in the 1991 Gandhi murder case.

Earlier, the apex court had stayed the release of the seven. Today it made it clear that this order would hold until disposal of the GOI’s petition by the Constitution bench.

It would be decided also by constitution bench as to who had primacy over the issue of remissions – the centre (GOI) or the states — and whether there could be two “appropriate governments” in a given case under Section 432(7) of the IPC. It would also explain the kind of “consultation” the states would have to undertake with the Centre on the subject or they would have to take the Centre’s concurrence. The matter would go to the larger bench “as early as possible, preferably within a period of three months,” the bench said.