A Supreme Court Bench led by Justice U.U. Lalit has asked the Centre to decide on the mercy petition of Balwant Singh Rajoana, convicted in the 1995 assasination of Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh in a car bombing. The main suicide bomber was carried out by Dilawar Singh Babbar and Rajoana was the ‘backup bomber’. They were both affiliated to the Sikh separatist group Babbar Khalsa. Rajoana has already served 25 years in jail. The Supreme Court has said that it would prefer a decision on his mercy petition within two months, irrespective of the fact that those of other convicts were also pending.
He had filed a mercy petition for Presidential pardon in 2012 after protests in Punjab against his death penalty, and the government had decided to give him clemency in 2019. Despite this, Rajoana wrote to the Court that his repeated requests of the status of the mercy plea was met with “silence”, calling the delay “inexplicable”.
The Supreme Court said that under the Article 72, once the government has decided to recommend a Presidential pardon, the pending appeals of other convicts in the same case cannot delay the process. The Court had sought an action taken report from the government.
The court also countered the government’s argument that Rajoana’s mercy petition was filed by an organization and not him personally by saying that the government had contacted him several times before and that the present writ petition had been filed directly by him.
The next hearing has been scheduled for July.
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