Punjab jailor wants Sikh terrorist's death warrant deferred

Chandigarh, March 26 (IANS) The Patiala jail superintendent Monday moved a petition in a court here seeking deferment of Sikh terrorist Balwant Singh Rajoana's death warrant, saying the legal process in the assassination case of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh was still on.

Appearing before the court of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) special judge Shalini Nagpal here Monday, Patiala jail superintendent L.S. Jakhar said the death warrant could not be executed since the matter of two others convicted in the case were still pending before the Supreme Court.

The court adjourned the matter till Tuesday. Rajoana, a Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) terrorist, is lodged in Patiala jail, 80 km from here.

The CBI counsel said the Punjab jail authorities were trying to confuse the matter with distorted records. He claimed that this was a violation of law.

The court had issued the death warrant to the jail authorities earlier this month, asking them to hang Rajoana March 31.

The move by the Punjab jail authorities follows the line adopted by the Punjab government which has said it would take all steps to save him from the gallows.

Rajoana was awarded death sentence by a CBI special court here July 2007 along with another terrorist, Jagtar Singh Hawara, in the Beant Singh assassination case.

The former chief minister (1992-95), who was largely credited with wiping out terrorism from Punjab by dealing with terrorists with an iron hand along with supercop K.P.S. Gill, was assassinated by a human bomb, Dilawar Singh, at the high security Punjab civil secretariat here Aug 31, 1995.

While Hawara was the mastermind of the assassination, Rajoana was the second human bomb to be used in case the first assassin failed to kill Beant Singh. Rajoana, during the entire 11-year trial of the assassination, had admitted that he alone was responsible for the killing of Beant Singh.

He has refused to defend himself in any court saying that he "be hanged to death for the cause of Khalistan (a separate Sikh homeland)".