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| India-Pakistan |
| Death for two in Beant Singh assassination case |
| 2007-07-31 |
| CHANDIGARH: A special trial court on Tuesday sentenced two Babbar Khalsa terrorists to death for the 1995 assassination of then Punjab chief minister Beant Singh. Additional District and Sessions Judge Ravi Kumar Sondhi pronounced the death sentence for Jagtar Singh Hawara, the mastermind, and Balwant Singh. The judge awarded life imprisonment to three others, Shamsher Singh, Gurmeet Singh and Lakhwinder Singh, who were convicted last week for conspiring to assassinate Beant Singh. A suicide bomber, Dilawar Singh, killed the chief minister as he came out of his office at the high security Punjab civil secretariat in Chandigarh on August 31, 1995. Balwant Singh was the second human bomb, to be used in case the first suicide bomber failed to kill Beant Singh. A sixth person convicted in the same case under the Explosives Act, Naseeb Singh, was awarded 10 years imprisonment by the court on Tuesday. Since he has already spent 12 years in prison, he is likely to be let off. All six were last week convicted by the special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in the conspiracy of assassinating Beant Singh, who became chief minister in 1992. Beant Singh, along with "super cop" K P S Gill, was largely credited with wiping out terrorism from Punjab by dealing with terrorists with an iron hand. |
| Posted by:John Frum |