{"id":124482,"date":"2013-04-26T17:19:13","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T11:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=124482"},"modified":"2013-04-26T17:19:13","modified_gmt":"2013-04-26T11:49:13","slug":"hope-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/hope-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Hope Alone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Have
Have mercy<\/strong> Bhullar\u2019s wife Navneet Kaur at a protest march in New Delhi, Photo:<\/strong> AFP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Davinderpal Singh Bhullar, then a professor of engineering in Punjab, had his 9\/11 moment eight years before the rest of the world did. On 11 September 1993, a bomb went off half a mile from Parliament killing nine people, including two bodyguards of a Congress leader who was its alleged target and who survived. Two weeks before the other, bigger 9\/11 of 2001, a trial judge in New Delhi said Bhullar should hang for his alleged role in the 1993 bombing. Now, a dozen years after his conviction, Bhullar\u2019s chances to escape the gallows are thinnest ever. His family rests its hope in arguing that he is not fit psychologically and is, therefore, ineligible for the hanging. \u201cHe did not recognise me,\u201d says his wife, Navneet Bhullar, who met him this week at New Delhi\u2019s Tihar Central Prison. \u201cHis conviction devastated him as there was no evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bhullar\u2019s lawyer KTS Tulsi, one of India\u2019s foremost human rights counsel, believes the case can still be argued in his favour on merit. As TEHELKA goes to print, Tulsi is preparing a petition to seek a review of a Supreme Court ruling last week that upheld then President Pratibha Patil\u2019s rejection of Bhullar\u2019s petition for mercy in 2011. Tulsi\u2019s optimism stems from the fact that, back in March 2002, one of the three SC judges who heard Bhullar\u2019s appeal against his conviction had acquitted him.<\/p>\n

When Bhullar\u2019s petition for a review came up before the same three judges in December 2002, the dissenting judge stuck to his ruling, as did the other two judges who had months earlier upheld his death sentence. Yet, the majority judgment on the review petition explicitly said that the views of the dissenting judge should be considered in deciding Bhullar\u2019s mercy petition whenever it comes up subsequently. The reason was that the dissenting judge, MB Shah, being senior-most, was also the presiding judge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government should have placed before the president the grounds on which the presiding judge acquitted Bhullar,\u201d says Tulsi. Also, he says, the fact of the \u201csplit decision should have taken the conviction out of the ambit of the \u2018rarest of rare cases\u2019\u201d. Tulsi\u2019s reference is to a foundational ruling the SC gave exactly 30 years ago that said capital punishment should only be given in the \u201crarest of rare cases\u201d. Another principle that ruling established is that there should be \u201cincontrovertible\u201d proof of the guilt of the accused. \u201cBut how can the proof be incontrovertible if a judge acquits him?\u201d<\/p>\n

Bhullar, now 47, was arrested in 1995 at the New Delhi airport after Germany rejected his plea for asylum and deported him. Delhi Police claimed he confessed to his role in the 1993 bombing. Bhullar said he was tortured and made to sign a blank paper. Strangely, the trial court acquitted his only other co-accused, who had been extradited from the US. Unlike Bhullar, the co-accused was not tried under TADA, a counter- terrorism law. TADA was widely abused for years before human rights activists forced the government to let it lapse, ironically in 1995, months after Bhullar was arrested under it. Since then, Germany has officially regretted its decision to deport him.<\/p>\n

On 17 April, Amnesty International urged New Delhi not to execute Bhullar by saying his trial fell \u201cfar short of international standards for a fair trial\u201d. His wife, who is a Canadian Sikh, says Ottawa has written to the Indian government against Bhullar\u2019s death sentence. She has met with lawyers across Europe and North America, and now plans to move the UN.<\/p>\n

But there is little in India\u2019s judicial annals to offer optimism. Should the SC dismiss the upcoming review petition against its decision upholding the presidential rejection, Bhullar can go back to the judges with what is known as a \u201ccurative\u201d petition. Such a petition, explains Tulsi, seeks to cure a \u201cserious defect because so long as a (defective) judgment remains operative, it will continue to create confusion as it has precedent value\u201d. If all else fails, Bhullar can file a second appeal for clemency with the president on grounds that he believes did not exist when he had filed his first.<\/p>\n

That ground can only be his reportedly failing mental health.<\/p>\n

ajit@tehelka.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DS Bhullar, given capital punishment for a terror crime, can still avail a three-step legal remedy. But pickings are slim, says Ajit Sahi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":124492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[56],"tags":[8626,8909,8910,8911,8324],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124482"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}