No pardon granted to Beant Singh killer Rajoana: Shah in LS

Vibha Sharma
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, December 3

Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday told the Lok Sabha that “no pardon has been given” to Babbar Khalsa terrorist Balwant Singh Rajoana convicted for the assassination of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh.

The Home Minister said this in response to Beant Singh’s grandson and Ludhaina MP Ravneet Singh Bittu during the Question Hour.

While referring to a debate in Parliament on Monday where several members had sought a death sentence for accused in the horrific Hyderabad rape case, the Congress MP asked Shah why then “Rajoana was pardoned”.

“Main aaj ye mudda isliye utha rha hoon kyonki kal hi dono sadno nein rape ke liye phansi ki baat ki, Amit Shahji jawab dijiye ke aapne Punjab ke Balwant Singh Rajoana ke phansi ki saaza kyo maaf ki” (I am raising this issue because yesterday both the Houses discussed capital punishment for rape, please tell Amit Shahji why did you commute the death sentence of Punjab’s Balwant Singh Rajoana),” Ravneet Singh said as a supplementary to a question related to destruction caused by Cyclone Fani in Odisha earlier this year.

There was a slight commotion in the House because of the unrelated nature of his query but Shah, who was present in the House, said: “Aap please media ki reports par mat jaiye, koi maafi nahi di gyi hai (You please do not go by media reports, no pardon has been given).”

Later, Ravneet Singh told The Tribune that he had been trying to raise the issue in the House in the presence of Home Minister Amit Shah. “It is an important issue related to the assassination of a former Chief Minister. It was important that views of the Home Minister are taken on it,” he said.

Notably, on September 30, the Ministry of Home Affairs had taken a decision to commute the death sentence of Rajoana to life imprisonment as a “humanitarian gesture” on the occasion of 550th birth celebrations of Guru Nanak Dev. In November, the Centre sent a letter to the UT administration of Chandigarh in this regard, sources in the government said.

Rajoana, a former Punjab Police constable, was convicted for his involvement in an explosion outside the Punjab civil secretariat that killed Beant Singh and 16 others in 1995. While announcing the commutation of Rajoana’s death sentence, MHA officials had then said “eight other Sikh prisoners, lodged in different jails in the country for committing crimes during the militancy in Punjab, would also be released by the government on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Shri Guru Nanak Devji as a humanitarian gesture”.

A special court had in July 2007 awarded the death sentence to Rajoana, along with another terrorist Jagtar Singh Hawara, in the Beant Singh assassination case. Rajoana was scheduled to be hanged on March 31, 2012, but the execution was stayed on March 28, 2012, by the then UPA government in the Centre after the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhandak Committee filed a mercy petition. The President had forwarded the plea to the Home Ministry to take a call on it. Since then the petition was pending with the Home Ministry.