NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Wednesday ticked off the Union govt for opposing consideration of the plea of condemned prisoner Balwant Singh Rajoana, convicted of killing then Punjab CM Beant Singh in 1995, for commutation of death sentence. Rajoana has petitioned for reprieve on the ground that he has been on death row for nearly two decades now. Additional solicitor general K M Nataraj told a bench headed by Justice Vikram Nath that the President did not take a call on Rajoana’s plea as it was filed by others and not by the prisoner himself. The bench, however, was not persuaded. If sentence is commuted, Rajoana will walk: Rohatgi Appearing for Rajoana, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi said that Supreme Court has commuted death sentences of convicts who had been facing the gallows for just two years. “Here the man has been behind bars for three decades, and two decades under the shadow of a death sentence. If SC commutes his sentence to life imprisonment, he will be released from prison,” Rohatgi said. He cited an apex court judgment commuting the death sentence of Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar and said the man was convicted for 1993 bomb blasts in Delhi, which had killed nine persons, and had remained on death row since 2001. In 2014, SC commuted his sentence to life term on the ground that there had been an inordinate delay in his execution despite the President rejecting his mercy plea, argued the senior advocate. On Sept 27, 2019, Union home ministry informed the Punjab chief secretary that on the occasion of commemoration of 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev a decision was taken to commute Rajoana’s death penalty to life term. But this was not given effect to. Rajoana, who had not appealed against the death sentence given by trial court in 2007 and its approval by Punjab and Haryana HC in 2010, moved SC seeking commutation of his death sentence on the ground that he was in prison for last 25 years and on death row for last 13 years. Rajoana and Jagtar Singh Hawara were awarded death sentences by the trial court for the bomb blast on Aug 31, 1995 which killed Beant Singh and 16 others outside the Punjab and Haryana Civil Secretariat in Chandigarh.
