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Finally,
Akal Takht, top clergy order SGPC, DSGMC to act to save Bhullar
WSN News
AMRITSAR: So loud was the national pitch raised in support of the
demand for pulling back Parliament attack convict Mohd Afzal from
the gallows that it finally pierced through the larger Sikh apathy
in India towards Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar.
Now
the top clerics of the Sikh faith have come together to send a
poewrful signal. For the first time ever, the five Sikh high priests
openly sought clemency for Davinderpal Singh Bhullar, who is facing
death sentence in the 1993 bomb attack on the Delhi office of the
Indian National Youth Congress.
The
Amritsar Times, in its last issue, had bluntly posed the query "But
what about Bhullar?" on its front page when the Indian progressive
voices were being raised for Afzal. The question was but natural,
but it needed to be asked.
Now, the Akal Takht jathedar Giani Joginder Singh Vedanti, presiding
over a meeting held at the Akal Takht secretariat on Friday, has
directed the Presidents of both Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak
Committee (SGPC) and the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC),
apart from representatives of Human Rights Commission and other
Panthic organisations to meet India's President APJ Abdul Kalam and
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh within a week's time to urge them to
grant clemency to Davinderpal Singh Bhullar.
The
SGPC chief Avtar Singh Makkar has sent a memorandum to the
President, the Prime Minister and the Home Minister of India urging
them to convert the death sentence of Bhullar into life
imprisonment. Capital punishment to Davinder Pal Singh Bhullar was
awarded by the Delhi Session court and later upheld by the Supreme
Court in sheer fractured verdict merely on the basis of pre-prepared
and fabricated confessional statement. Bhullar was forced to sign
the pre prepared statement before the DCP, special cell of the Delhi
Police during the police remand.
The
presiding judge of the three members bench justice M.B Shah fairly
acquitted Bhullar by terming the so-called confessional statement as
unauthentic but the rest two judges while admitting the so called
confessional statement, upheld the sentence.
Vedanti has now put the top temporal seal. “I am not in favour of
giving death sentence and would want President to use his powers,”
he said addressing representatives of Sikh bodies.
But
the problem with the whole issue is that it is not making its
presence felt on the agenda of political parties. At the Akali rally
which talked of so much else, it did not occur to Prakash Singh
Badal to mention this as one of the demands. Views of CM Amarinder
Singh on this have never been asked. No wonder, the larger Indian
nation is guided by the intellectual honesty of Maninderjit Singh
Bitta, or its utter absence.
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