1993 Delhi bomb blast: SRB may take up remission plea of Davinder Pal Singh Bhullar next week

NEW DELHI: The sentence review board of the Delhi government is likely to meet next week to decide on the remission plea of the 1993 Delhi bomb blast convict Davinder Pal Singh Bhullar.
Bhullar’s plea for the early release was taken up by the board in March this year but deferred after a disagreement among the members. Sources said the similar plea of at least three more convicts was also likely to be taken in the meeting.
Bhullar was convicted for a bomb blast in Delhi in 1993, which killed nine and caused injuries to 31.A TADA court had sentenced Bhullar to death on August 25, 2001. However, his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court later. Bhullar is currently lodged in Amritsar Central Jail after he was shifted from Delhi’s Tihar Jail on health grounds in June 2015.
According to sources, the Union home ministry had written to the chief secretary of Delhi in September 2019 informing its decision to give special remission to eight Sikh prisoners facing life imprisonment, including Bhullar, on the occasion of the commemoration of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev and asked the state government to take necessary steps for his release.
While Delhi home minister Satyendra Jain, who chairs the sentence review board, stated in the meeting that the directions of the Centre were binding on the Delhi government since the same were made under Article 161 of the Constitution and Bhullar was ought to be released, some of the members were against his release arguing that he was a hardened criminal.
The board then decided to take legal opinion on the matter and defer the decision till the next meeting. The other members of the board include the prison’s director general, state home secretary, state law secretary, a district judge, the government’s chief probationary officer and a joint commissioner rank officer from Delhi Police.