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International Pressure Mounts Against India to Stop the Execution of Davinderpal Singh Part I: Background Sikhs from all over the world are coming together to bring international attention to the case of Davinderpal Singh, a Sikh political dissident from India who is on death row in Tihar Central Prison, New Delhi. He has been in prison for the last seven years since being deported to India following an unsuccessful asylum application in Germany in January 1995. Davinderpal Singh, who has stated that his best friend was killed and his father and uncle disappeared at the hands of the Punjab police in 1991, went to Germany in December 1994 to seek political asylum. International human rights groups such as Amnesty International have documented that since 1983 scores of people had been arrested and tortured to death, deliberately and unlawfully killed in custody, or had simply disappeared while security forces refused to acknowledge that they had been arrested. The German immigration authorities returned Davinderpal Singh to India although a Frankfurt court concluded after his deportation that he should not have been sent to India because it would mean he would face grave torture and persecution as a known political activist. Back in India, the 37-year-old Davinderpal Singh was charged under the draconian and now defunct TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities) Act for conspiring to kill the then Youth Congress leader Maninderjit Singh in a 1993 car bomb attack in New Delhi which killed nine people. The case against him was based on a confession allegedly obtained under torture and threat of death. No corroborative evidence was offered by the prosecution. None of the witnesses produced by the prosecution identified him. Two accused co-conspirators were acquitted and the other two are said to be missing. The presiding justice of the three-justice bench acquitted Davinderpal Singh because too much doubt remained on the authenticity of the alleged confession to the police and because it is impossible for the accused to conspire with himself. In stark contrast, the other two judges convicted him arguing that proof "beyond reasonable doubt" should be a "guideline, not a fetish" and that procedure is only "a handmaiden and not the mistress of law." On December 17, 2002,
the Supreme Court of India confirmed Davinderpal's death sentence. The
presiding judge in the Supreme Court of India Justice Shah, who found
Davinderpal Singh not guilty, also dissented on the sentencing. He stated
that the death sentence should be commuted "…considering the
majority view also, in my opinion, if death sentence is altered to imprisonment
for life, it would be sufficient to meet the ends of justice…"
The death sentence, however, was passed by a split verdict in the Supreme
Court of India for the first time in its history. |