The Supreme Court on Friday postponed for two weeks the hearing on a plea filed by Babbar Khalsa operative Jagtar Singh Hawara, who is serving a life sentence for the 1995 assassination of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh. Hawara has sought to be shifted from Delhi’s Tihar Jail to a prison in Punjab.
A bench headed by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai, sitting with Justice Vijay Bishnoi, adjourned the matter after a brief hearing. The court had earlier, on September 27 last year, issued notices to the Union government, the Chandigarh administration, and the Delhi and Punjab governments on Hawara’s transfer request.
Hawara is undergoing imprisonment for life “till the rest of his life” for his role in the August 31, 1995 blast outside the Chandigarh civil secretariat that killed Beant Singh and 16 others. His plea argues that since the conviction relates to a Punjab case and no proceedings are pending against him in Delhi, he should be confined in a Punjab prison.
During the hearing, the bench asked Hawara’s counsel, senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, how Hawara had managed to escape from jail during the 2004 jailbreak attempt. Hawara had been arrested later.
“Today, we are almost 30 years from the main incident and 20 years from the jail break,” Gonsalves responded, urging the court to consider the passage of time and the petitioner’s conduct since his re-arrest.
The petition, filed through advocate Satya Mitra, states that Hawara has maintained an unblemished jail record for the past 19 years. It also claims that while 36 “false cases” were registered against him after the assassination, he has been acquitted in all except one.
The plea argues that another convict from the same case, who also took part in the 2004 escape, has already been transferred from Tihar to a jail in Chandigarh, and therefore Hawara’s request should be considered on parity.
It further notes that Hawara is a native of Fatehgarh Sahib district in Punjab, that his daughter lives in Punjab, and that his wife has died. His mother, the petition states, is in a coma in the United States.
According to the petition, the “high-risk” classification assigned years ago cannot be a standing justification for keeping him incarcerated in Delhi indefinitely, particularly when the only case under which he is serving a life term is registered in Chandigarh.
The plea says Hawara would be governed by Punjab prison rules and contends that there is “no provision” allowing Delhi to confine him when no case is pending in the national capital.
Hawara was sentenced to death by a trial court in 2007. The Punjab and Haryana High Court commuted the sentence to imprisonment for life in 2010, with a direction that he shall not be released for the rest of his life. Appeals filed by both Hawara and the prosecution against the 2010 verdict are still pending before the Supreme Court.
The matter will now be taken up after two weeks.
