The Beant Singh assassination was the biggest militant attack when peace was making a grand entry into Punjab after 17 bloody years. It was also an explosive end for the man who had led the political charge against pro-Khalistani terrorism and buffered super-cop K.P.S. Gill, whose men chased and killed almost all terrorists, sometimes torturing their harbourers and, at times, targeting the wrong men. But the end result was a spectacular turnaround in Punjab, with the scars slowly showing signs of vanishing.
Balwant Singh Rajoana, who was the 'human bomb in reserve' in that ghastly event on August 31, 1995, was almost executed, more than once. Now his death sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment.
Rajoana not only confessed to his role in the assassination of Beant Singh, but held his head high as he asserted that he had no regrets. Rajoana was awarded the death sentence by a CBI special judge in July 2007, after the trial of the six accused. While the others appealed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Rajoana refused to appeal and declined to defend himself with legal help. Rajoana stuck to his guns even when the court offered him legal assistance. The High Court,in October 2010, confirmed the trial court award of the death sentence. But the death sentence of another accused, Jagtar Singh Hawara, was commuted to life imprisonment.
Rajoana had pledged to donate his eyes and asked permission to take a dip in the waters around the Darbar Sahib in the Golden Temple complex.
Nine years later, as the world celebrates the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, Rajoana, who sat defenceless by choice, finds his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment by the Narendra Modi government, in one grand gesture as part of the Guru Nanak Jayanti festivities. Rajoana has already spent almost a quarter-century in jail.
The government has also conceded a long-standing demand for life imprisonment instead of death for Rajoana. If the Chandigarh-based Lawyers for Human Rights International (LHRI) left no stone unturned towards this goal, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee mobilised religious and community support for Rajoana.
It was not just groups of radical former militants and residual elements of the Shiromani Akali Dal( Amritsar), led by Simranjit Singh Mann, that wanted his life spared. Even the Shiromani Akali Dal of Parkash Singh Badal, while in power in Punjab with the BJP as a coalition partner, wanted the life of Beant Singh's assassin spared. Not because the late chief minister, who is credited with eradicating militancy and terrorism in Punjab—and paying the price for it with his life—was a Congress leader.
A constable of the Punjab Police, Rajoana is believed to have developed more than a soft spot for militants, convinced that the Sikhs were being marginalised as a small, Pakistan-supported and violent pro-Khalistan movement gripped some pockets of Punjab. Rajoana was one of a few in the uniformed forces to have reacted thus. There were soldiers who deserted the Army in the wake of Operation Blue Star in 1984. If the deserters were swayed by the attack on the Akal Takht, Rajoana responded to the encounters in which many innocent youth of Punjab were killed.
Rajoana was to be hanged on March 31, 2012. But as the countdown to his execution was about to begin, the Akali Dal got a stay from the president. The SGPC had filed a plea.
The Congress in Punjab has not officially reacted to Rajoana's death sentence being commuted to life. The SAD has taken credit, saying the BJP is a long-standing partner.
The LHRI, has hailed it. They had then maintained before the president of India that India had not executed 'anyone' since 2004, and while Rajoana's conviction was based on his confession, the case of co-accused Jagtar Singh Hawara was pending in the Supreme Court. LHRI also argued the death penalty was used only in the rarest of rare cases.
India has resorted to capital punishment thereafter—Ajmal Kasab, Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon.
But in Rajoana's case, life has come in the form of Wahe Guruji's 550th birth anniversary.