Abolish Death Penalty India: Derby cousin’s tears of joy as professor is off Death Row after 19 years

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Derby cousin’s tears of joy as professor is off Death Row after 19 years

By Derby Telegraph | Posted: April 16, 2014

By Joey Severn

THE cousin of a man who has been on Death Row for more than 19 years has spoken of her delight that his sentence has been commuted. Kamalpreet Kaur, of Littleover, has not seen her cousin, Professor Devender Pal Singh Bhullar, since he was sentenced to death in India. The family, along with members of the Sikh community in Derby and across the world, joined together to lobby for his release. And that dream has taken a step closer to becoming a reality after he was finally released from Death Row. Mrs Kaur said: “I first received a call from India and later I spoke to his wife. “I was very happy when I heard. I was crying because it was so emotional. “We are hoping that he will be free soon and that we will be able to see him again. “I last saw him in 1991.

He has been imprisoned and later on Death Row for more than 19 and a half years; his mental and physical health has been seriously affected.” Mrs Kaur, who travelled from the Punjab to live in Derby in 2001, believes that her cousin has been wrongly imprisoned for a crime that he did not commit. Derby campaigner Bhajan Singh Dheansay said that Professor Bhullar’s father, uncle and best friend were murdered in 1991. He said: “Those people were murdered by the state in the Punjab because the professor was a lecturer and 42 of his students went on a demonstration and never came back. “The professor started asking questions about the system and, because of this, his father, brother and best friend were murdered.” Professor Bhullar was then accused of detonating a car bomb in Delhi in 1993 in an attack on a politician. The professor fled to Germany in an attempt to gain political asylum but was deported back to India.

At his trial he was found guilty and sentenced to death. He has spent more than 19 years not knowing if he would see the next day and, despite various appeals, his suffering has meant he was placed in a psychiatric ward for prisoners. But now Professor Bhullar’s sentence has been commuted to life, giving the family hope that he could be soon released. Mrs Kaur said: “It has been extremely hard for all the family, particularly for his wife and his mother. This is the first good news that we have had in all those long years. “I would like to thank every one who has helped over the years, especially the Sikh community in Derby and MPs, including Chris Williamson. “We dearly hope and pray for Professor Devinder-Pal Singh to be home again with his family.” Sikh community leader Jaz Rai said: “The love and support that we have seen from the Sikh community and the wider Derby community has been fantastic. “It is good news that he is now off Death Row. “The next step is to have him released but he has already been in prison for a life sentence.

“I would also like to thank the Derby Telegraph who have helped highlight the case of the sorts of injustices that are going on in what is supposed to be the biggest democracy in the world.” Labour Derby North MP Mr Williamson, who is the secretary of the cross-party group of MPs focused on the global abolition of the death penalty, backed the campaign. He said: “It is fantastic news but now the campaign to get him fully released begins. “I believe his conviction is unsafe and I will be continuing to support the campaign and the family to see him freed.”

Source: http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/Derby-cousin-8217-s-tears-joy-professor-Death-Row/story-20961394-detail/story.html [accessed 24 April 2014]

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The Death Penalty Scenario in India

India is one of the 193 countries that retains death penalty. There has always been a few imminent judges who have pronounced compelling verdicts upholding the rights of prisoners on death row. There has been increasing debate in various platforms advocating abolition of death penalty or at least to rethink sentencing policies in India. The Indian government has however always been committed to the retention of the death penalty, irrespective of their political ideology. India has voted against a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) draft resolution on the use of death penalty, saying it goes against the statutory law of the country where an execution is carried out in the "rarest of rare" cases. India retains the death penalty as punishment for a number of crimes including murder, kidnapping, terrorism, desertion, inducement to suicide of a minor or a mentally-retarded person and has more recently in 2013 come to include the offence of rape in certain circumstances. Most recently, there is an outrage over child rape and murder.

After observing an unofficial moratorium of 8 years in India, the Indian Government in November 2012 carried out the execution of Ajmal Kasab, convicted in the Mumbai attacks case, without public knowledge. This was followed by the secret execution of Afzal Guru, convicted in the Parliament attack case of 2001, in February 2013, under similar circumstances, without intimating his immediate family or affording a chance of judicial review. In both cases, the executions were carried out under covert operations conducted by the Government immediately upon rejection of their mercy petitions. Before these executions, the last execution to be carried out in India was that of Dhananjoy Chatterjee in 2004 who was convicted of rape and murder and which sentence was carried out after he had spent 13 years in solitary confinement. Following this, several mercy petitions of death row convicts have come to be rejected. The fear of execution of such convicts is imminent. Bolstered by the Government's unapologetic conduct and public outcry, especially in recent cases of rape and murder reported in the country, the courts are continuing to hand down death sentences at an alarming rate.

In the recent past, there have been a few empirical studies (mainly four) conducted with prisoners on death row. This has highlighted the situation of prisoners on death row.

(1) Most recently the India Exclusion Report 2017-18 found that fair trial rights and guarantees are reduced to a nullity and seeks to breach the citadel of the collective silence. It further said that Convicts on death row in India belong to groups marginalised along the axes of caste, religion, economic vulnerability and educational deprivation, and their fair trial rights, though a part of the Right to Life guaranteed by the Constitution, are invariably non-existent, a survey of 371 out of the 385 persons living under the death sentence and their families has revealed.

(2) Another study was The Death Penalty Research Project (2015) which was conceived with an aim to document the socio-economic profile of prisoners sentenced to death in India and map their experience within the criminal justice system.

There were two other academic studies that were done conducted by Dr. Reena Mary George –

(3)“Voices of prisoners surviving the death row in India” (2014) done through the University of Vienna under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Christoph Reinprecht (Sociology) and Prof. Dr. Manfred Nowak (Law and Ex-United Nations Rapporteur on Torture). George’s research highlights three salient features, namely: poverty, social exclusion and marginalisation are antecedent to death penalty; death penalty is a constructed account by the state machinery; and prisoners on death row situate dignity higher in the juxtaposition of death and dignity.

(4) Another one “Death Penalty – A Human Rights Perspective” (2009) done through the University of Mumbai under the guidance of Retired Justice Hosbet Suresh. This was a study in Maharashtra with the objectives to firstly study the impact of death penalty on the social, mental, and physical being of the inmate and secondly, to study the perception of opinion leaders on death penalty with reference to human rights. All the above reports are public documents.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Prison Statistics 2015, there are 101 prisoners sentenced to death. The actual figure of sentences originally awarded is much higher considering the death sentences of 49 convicts came to be commuted to life imprisonment in the said period. As of today, almost in 2019, the figures are unknown through government statistics, however, research centres claim this figure to be around 371 convicts. During the 1980s the Supreme Court sought to restrict the use of the death penalty by characterizing it as a punishment reserved only for the “rarest of the rare” cases. The doctrine has not had the desired effect. According to a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court, Rajindar Sachar: “after the rarest of rare doctrine was introduced in 1980, the Supreme Court confirmed death penalty in 40 per cent of cases in the period 1980-90 while it was 37.7 per cent between 1970 and 1980. For the high courts it rose from 59 per cent in 1970-80 to 65 per cent during 1980-90”. Over the past two decades the death penalty has been extended to include more crimes and been handed down with increasing frequency.

Most recently while commuting a sentence in Supreme Court (2018), Justice Joseph did not seek the reconsideration of the Bachan Singh judgment, but only sought to re-examine the purpose and practice of the death penalty, and whether as a punishment, it serves any goal at all. In other words, the death penalty can continue to remain constitutionally valid because of the Bachan Singh judgment, but its application in substantive cases coming before the court must be restricted to only those cases which meet the criteria laid down in that case.

While updating the blog and conducting my own empirical studies, I observed the heinous nature of the crimes that were committed and thought about the families, about their loss, about the victims who for no fault of their own died. If I lost my relative or a dear friend, would I still oppose death penalty and would I still advocate to abolish the death sentence? Having worked in the criminal justice system and also having the seen the other side, where often it is the marginalized, vulnerable and oppressed who are on death row makes me want to advocate for abolition of this punishment. Victims should definitely get justice for their loss, for their pain. No one should escape the rule of law. As long as humanity exists; crime will exist. Should we not re-consider our sentencing policies?

Reena Mary George

Abolish Death Penalty India

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Derby cousin’s tears of joy as professor is off Death Row after 19 years

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