Today, On 17th February, The Supreme Court has postponed the hearing on Jagtar Singh Hawara’s plea seeking his transfer from Delhi’s Tihar Jail to a Punjab prison. The matter will now be taken up on March 11 for further consideration by the Bench.
The Supreme Court postponed the hearing regarding Jagtar Singh Hawara’s request to transfer him from Tihar Jail in Delhi to a prison in Punjab until March 11.
Hawara, a convicted member of the Babbar Khalsa terrorist group, is serving a life sentence for his role in the assassination of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh in 1995.
A bench led by Justices M M Sundresh and N Kotiswar Singh adjourned the proceedings after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta requested a delay.
Last September, the court had issued notices to the central government, Chandigarh administration, and the governments of Delhi and Punjab regarding Hawara’s plea. He is serving a life sentence related to a bomb blast at the entrance of the civil secretariat in Chandigarh on August 31, 1995, which resulted in the deaths of Beant Singh and 16 others.
The petition claimed that Hawara has maintained a commendable record in prison, with the exception of an alleged escape attempt on January 22, 2004, for which he was subsequently re-arrested. It argued that he should be moved from Tihar Jail to a facility in Punjab, noting that no cases are pending against him in Delhi.
It stated,
“Petitioner 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 state of Punjab, Fatehgarh Sahib district, and ought to be confined in a prison in Punjab,”
The plea further highlighted that after the murder, Hawara faced 36 false charges but was acquitted in all but one, and pointed out that another individual involved in the same case had already been relocated from Tihar to a jail in Chandigarh.
Adding that Hawara’s daughter resides in Punjab, it continued,
“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,”
His wife has passed away, and his mother is currently in a coma in the United States.
The petition raised the question of whether someone accused of murder amid significant social turmoil, during which many young Sikhs were extrajudicially killed by the state police on the orders of Chief Minister Beant Singh, could seek a transfer to a Punjab prison after leading a blemish-free life in incarceration for the past 19 years.
In March 2007, Hawara had been sentenced to death, but the Punjab and Haryana High Court commuted this to life imprisonment in October 2010, stipulating he should not be released for the remainder of his life. His petition noted that both his and the prosecution’s appeals against the high court verdict are still pending in the Supreme Court.
Case Title : JAGTAR SINGH HAWARA vs. GOVT. OF NCT OF DELHI