The Supreme Court on Tuesday deferred hearing on Jagtar Singh Hawara’s plea seeking his transfer from Delhi’s Tihar Jail to Punjab by two weeks.
Hawara is an accused in the 1995 killing of former Punjab chief minister, Beant Singh, and serving life term in the case.
A bench comprising Justices M M Sundresh and N Kotiswar Singh adjourned the matter as Solicitor General Tushar Mehta was not available.
On September 27 last year, the apex court had issued notices to the Centre, Chandigarh administration and the Delhi and Punjab governments on Hawara’s plea that mentioned Hawara’s blemish-free conduct in prison, except for an alleged jail break on January 22, 2004, when he escaped, but was later arrested.
The plea also said Hawara should be transferred from Tihar Jail 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 state of Punjab, Fatehgarh Sahib district, and ought to be confined in a prison in Punjab,” it stated.
Also Read: Beant Singh murder: Punjab opposes Hawara's jail transfer plea in SC
According to the plea, the petitioner had 36 false cases foisted on him after the murder of Beant Singh, but was acquitted in all except one. One person convicted in the same case and also part of the jail break has already 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 plea stressed on the unfair comparison between Hawara’s one-time jail break incident and years of maintaining a clean record as a convict since then, and brings attention to his motive of killing a leader accused of ordering the elimination of thousands of young, innocent Sikh men extra-judicially to tackle terrorism in the state.
“The question that arises in this case is whether a person who has been accused of committing a murder 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.
Hawara is serving life imprisonment 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.
In March 2007, Hawara was sentenced to death by a trial court in the case, which was later commuted to life imprisonment in 2010 by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, with a direction that he shall not be released from jail for the rest of his life.
Hawara’s petition said the appeals filed by him as well as by the prosecution against the high court verdict are still pending in the apex court.
Follow us
