NEW DELHI – The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to examine the logic behind the eight long years taken by the government to reject the mercy plea of alleged Khalistan Liberation Front militant Devender Singh Pal Bhullar, sentenced to death for masterminding a bomb blast in Delhi in 1993.
President Pratibha Patil, on the advice of the UPA government, had rejected Bhullar’s mercy plea just after he approached the apex court seeking commutation of the death sentence on grounds of delay.
On Tuesday, senior advocate K T S Tulsi informed a bench of Justices G S Singhvi and H L Dattu that the Delhi government had given its views favouring rejecting of the mercy petition as far back as 2003 but the Centre sat on it for eight years forcing the man, awaiting death, to develop psychotic disorder.
“A man who is not in sound health cannot be executed,” he said while arguing for Bhullar’s wife Navneet Kaur, who has sought commutation of the death sentence on grounds of delay.
The bench expressed surprise over the long delay on the government’s part to decide a mercy plea and suggested that the issue be adjudicated in deciding the petition filed by Bhullar rather than the one filed by his wife. Tulsi agreed and the bench posted the matter for hearing in the first week of September.
