Beant Singh Murder: SC Defers Hawara’s Plea to Shift Jail

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court postponed the hearing on Beant Singh murder convict Jagtar Singh Hawara's request to be transferred from Delhi's Tihar jail to any prison in Punjab by two weeks.

In connection with the 1995 murder of the previous chief minister of Punjab, the terrorist Babbar Khalsa is serving a life sentence.

Due to the absence of Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, a bench made up of Justices M M Sundresh and N Kotiswar Singh postponed the case.

On September 27 of last year, the Supreme Court sent letters regarding Hawara's case to the governments of Delhi, Punjab, Chandigarh, and the Centre.

Hawara is serving imprisonment for the rest of his life in the case related to the blast at the entrance of the civil secretariat at Chandigarh on August 31, 1995, in which Beant Singh and 16 more people were killed.

The plea filed in the apex court said Hawara's conduct in prison has been without blemish except for an alleged jail break on January 22, 2004, when he had escaped and was later arrested. It said he should be transferred from Tihar Jail in Delhi to any other prison in Punjab, as there is no case pending against him in the national capital.

"Petitioner (Hawara) is currently serving his life imprisonment till the rest of his life in a case registered in the state of Punjab... He is a native of the state of Punjab, Fatehgarh Sahib district, and ought to be confined in a prison in Punjab," it said.

According to the plea, the petitioner had 36 false cases foisted on him after the murder of Beant Singh, and he has been acquitted in all except one. One person convicted in the same case and also part of the jail break has been shifted from Tihar to a jail in Chandigarh, it said.

"The mere fact that the petitioner was considered a high-risk prisoner years ago is not a good enough reason today to keep the prisoner in Delhi and not shift him to Punjab," it said, adding that his daughter is in Punjab. Hawara's wife has died, and his mother is in a coma in the US.

"The question that arises in this case is whether a person who has been accused of murdering in the context of serious social upheaval where tens of thousands of young Sikhs were extra-judicially executed by the state police on the instructions of the deceased Chief Minister Beant Singh, which offence has been characterised as exacerbated by his unsuccessful jail break attempt, but who has for the last 19 years led a life in prison which is without blemish can seek an order from this court for transfer to a jail in Punjab," the plea said.

A trial court in the case sentenced Hawara to death in March 2007.

In October 2010, the Punjab and Haryana High Court commuted his sentence to life in prison, ordering that he be incarcerated for the remainder of his life.

According to Hawara's petition, the prosecution's and his appeals of the high court's decision are still pending before the Supreme Court.