HC asks Prisons Department to prepare updated list of cases pending against Jagtar Singh Hawara

New Delhi, October 9

The Delhi High Court on Friday asked the Department of Prisons to prepare an updated list of cases pending against Jagtar Singh Hawara, undergoing life sentence for conspiring to assassinate former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh.

Hawara has approached the High Court seeking direction to the authorities to update his case details in the prison records, alleging that their inaction is preventing him from exercising his legal rights like parole, furlough and suspension of sentence pending appeal.

Delhi Government standing counsel (criminal) Rahul Mehra, representing the Department of Prisons, submitted before Justice AJ Bhambhani that as per the information available with the Delhi Prisons, there were 37 cases against Hawara.

Mehra along with advocate Chaitanya Gosain said best efforts would be made to collate the list of cases along with their present status after collecting information from various courts outside Delhi and sought four week time for the purpose.

The court ordered, “Accordingly let an updated list be prepared and supplied to the petitioner (Hawara) before the next date of hearing.”     

A copy will also be placed before the court which listed the matter for further hearing on December 11.

Advocate Mehmood Pracha, representing Hawara, said due to the prisoner's incarceration, he was unable to track other cases in which he was implicated and hearings were going on.

He said due to this he had faced adverse orders in cases outside Delhi as he was unable to be present in the hearings.

He added that since dates of hearings are not available with Hawara, who is lodged in Tihar Jail, he may suffer from adverse consequences.

Mehra, meanwhile, submitted that they did not have information of all the cases pending against Hawara as most of them were pending in Punjab.

Hawara, in his petition filed through advocates Rudro Chatterjee and Shariq Nisar, said neither the authorities were updating the prison record of the cases against him on the basis of documents sought to be supplied by him nor they were making any efforts to procure information about the cases against him.

The plea said this had resulted in preventing him from exercising any of his remedies in respect of release from the prison.

It added that this is a mandatory duty of the authorities to keep up to date record of all the cases pending against an inmate.

Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) terrorist Jagtar Singh Hawara, the mastermind in the killing of Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh in 1995, was sentenced to death penalty on July 31, 2007 by a Punjab court.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court had on October 12, 2010 commuted the death penalty of Hawara and sentenced him to life imprisonment "till death" in the Chief Minister's murder case.

Seventeen persons, including the then CM, were killed and 15 others were injured in the incident.

Hawara, along with five others, had also been awarded seven years jail term in the 2005 Delhi blasts case.

In 2004, Hawara had escaped from maximum security jail at Burail in Chandigarh along with two other Sikh prisoners by digging a 90-feet tunnel with his bare hands. PTI

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