Chandigarh, March 30
A special trial court today awarded life imprisonment to Paramjit Singh Bheora, chief of the banned Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), for his involvement in the assassination of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh 14 years ago.
Additional District and Sessions Judge RK Sondhi handed down the sentence to Bheora, who headed the terrorist outfit’s operations in India and was arrested in 1997, after he was held guilty for criminal conspiracy and for his involvement in killing of Beant Singh in a car
blast on August 31, 1995, at the high-security Punjab civil secretariat complex.
However, counsel for Bheora, Arvind Thakur, told reporters outside the Burail jail, where the trial was held in a makeshift court, that they would challenge the verdict in the higher court.
The CBI had booked nine persons in the case.
Jagtar Singh Hawara and Balwant Singh were awarded death sentence in 2007. The other accused, Gurmeet Singh, Lakhwinder Singh and Shamsher Singh, were awarded life imprisonment.
The trial had virtually come to a halt after three of the accused, Hawara, Jagat Singh Tara and Bheora, escaped from the Burail jail by digging a 100-foot-long tunnel in January, 2004. But, it resumed in February, 2004, following the re-arrest of Hawara and Bheora though the police could not catch Tara.
The special court was told by the CBI that Bheora had helped Jagtar Singh Tara in bringing the car used in the blast inside the secretariat premises here. Bheora’s trial was segregated by an order of the court after his re-arrest from New Delhi in 2006.
Naseeb Singh was awarded a jail term of 10 years, besides a fine Rs 10,000, but he was released as he had already been in jail for as many years. Only Navjot Singh had been acquitted.
— PTI
