CHANDIGARH, Oct. 12: A division bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, on Tuesday, reduced Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) kingpin Jagtar Hawara’s death sentence in the Beant Singh assassination conspiracy to life imprisonment till death.
Credited with reviving the political process and helping bring normalcy to Punjab after two decades of unrelenting terrorist violence, the chief minister, Beant Singh, was killed by a suicide bomber on the evening of August 31, 1995. Eighteen others, including Congress MLA Baldev Singh Pakkakalan, security personnel and drivers on duty with the CM’s cavalcade also died in the powerful explosion that ripped across the front facade of the Punjab Civil Secretariat in Chandigarh.
Masterminded by Hawara — widely acknowledged as one of the wiliest of Khalistani terrorists — the conspiracy included several Punjab police personnel including the “human bomb” Dilawar Singh, the back-up suicide bomber Balwant Singh and Lakhwinder Singh.
The terrorist strike was ordered by the the Pakistan-based BKI chief, Wadhawa Singh Babbar, and allegedly sponsored by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence.
The bench clarified that Hawara was being “sentenced to life and will not be released till death.”