36 years after Indian Airlines hijacking, 2 Sikh militants face trial in Delhi court

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 18

Thirty-six years after an Indian Airlines plane with 111 passengers and six crew members on board was hijacked to Lahore on its way from New Delhi to Srinagar, two of the five Sikh hijackers appeared before a Delhi court to face sedition charges in connection with the case.

Accused Satnam Singh and Tejinder Pal Singh – who have already served life term in Pakistan in connection with the crime – appeared before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Jyoti Kler who granted them two-day interim bail.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

After serving their sentence in Pakistan, Tejinder Pal and Satnam had moved to Canada and the US, respectively, and were deported to India in 1998 and 1999. The other three hijackers -- Gajinder Singh, Jasbir Singh and Karan Singh -- are not in India.

Belonging to Dal Khalsa, the hijackers had demanded the release of Sikh preacher and head of Damdami Taksal Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale who was arrested on September 20 the same year in a murder case. Later, he was killed during Operation Bluestar in 1984.

The ACMM asked the Investigating Officer to file a report with all relevant documents and posted the matter for further hearing on July 20.

On behalf of the two accused, senior advocate Mohit Mathur and advocate Manisha Bhandari contended that the duo had already served life sentence in Pakistan and spent 35 years of their life in litigation.

Terming it a “classic example of double jeopardy”, the lawyers said their entire life will be spent in facing one trial after the other for the same set of facts. There should an end to their agony, the counsel submitted.

They were first tried for hijacking in Pakistan and sentenced to life imprisonment and they were again being tried for same offence by an Indian court, Mathur contended.

Maintaining that they can’t be tried again for the same incident under a different name, he said it was illegal on the face of it and the accused must be discharged.

Dal Khalsa spokesperson Kanwar Pal Singh, who accompanied the accused, said there had been travesty of justice in the case as the Indian government put them on trial after 36 years under "sedition charges", ignoring their life imprisonment in Pakistan for the same offence.

However, the prosecution and the court maintained that the principle of double jeopardy did not apply as the offences for which they were tried and convicted in Pakistan were different from the ones mentioned in the present charge sheet.

But the accused contended the incident of hijacking was one piece of act and a fresh case under different offences amounted to violation of the principle of double jeopardy under Article 20 of the Constitution.

The Delhi police had filed a supplementary charge sheet in a Delhi court on September 29, 2011 under sedition charges. After taking cognisance of the chargesheet, the court had asked the accused to appear before it on July 18 for a fresh trial in connection with the crime that took place on September 29, 1981.

In May 2017, the Delhi High Court had refused to quash the supplementary charge sheet against the accused and asked them to appear before the trial court.