He has spent around 25 years in jail. She has spent 28 years of her life waiting and fighting to see him a free man. Navneet Kaur Bhullar, the wife of Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, the convict in 1993 Delhi bomb blast case on then Youth Congress president M S Bitta’s entourage, recalled the arduous journey she and her husband had been through. The legal fight which led to commutation of Bhullar’s death sentence to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court in March 2014 looks set to culminate with his premature release. Talking to The Indian Express over the phone, Navneet said shortly after Bhullar’s transfer to Amritsar from Tihar jail in June 2015, there had been uncertainty about his premature release for more than three years after she moved an application for the same. “Everything appeared to be in dark for more than three years till now. It was a very tough time. The only thing which was there was the paperwork. The wait appeared endless. The Centre was to take a call. We could not have approached court either. I am happy that the moment (of Centre recommending premature release of Bhullar) came on the auspicious occasion of 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev ji,” said Navneet, who is a Canadian citizen and has been shuttling between India and Canada for about two decades, fighting legal battles for her husband. On the occasion of the commemoration of 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev, Centre had on September 27 recommended special remission to eight Sikh prisoners lodged in Punjab jails. Bhullar is one among them. The final and formal nod has to come from Delhi for the premature release as a part of standard procedure. After he was shifted from Tihar jail to Amritsar Central Jail, Bhullar was admitted to Swami Vivekanand De-addiction and Rehabilitation Centre at Amritsar for the treatment of psychiatric ailment he had developed while being in jail for long. He had been there since. He had been going out on parole since then as the commutation of death sentence to life imprisonment made him eligible for availing parole. Currently, too, Bhullar is on parole which ends later this month, Navneet said. Navneet, who hails from Amritsar, said that the health condition of her husband shows improvement when he is home. “When he goes back after the end of parole, things don’t remain the same. The permanent release would mean he will remain at home and his health condition will continue to improve. Simultaneously, the treatment will go on,” said Navneet. Before Bhullar became eligible for parole after commutation of his death sentence to life imprisonment, the duo remained together for barely three months after their marriage in September 1991. Bhullar, who traces his roots to Dialpura in Bathinda district, was a professor in Guru Nanak Engineering College at Ludhiana when the duo married. About three months into the marriage, Bhullar was suspected to be involved in a bomb attack on then Chandigarh Senior Superintendent of Police Sumedh Singh Saini, who retired in the rank of DGP in Punjab. Navneet has been asserting that Bhullar had no role in that. She says her husband was “vocal about some of the students who went missing during dark days of militancy in Punjab and was implicated in the case to silence him.” Bhullar was on the run for about three years, before 1993 Delhi bomb attack on M S Bitta’s convoy which left nine dead and Bitta injured. Bhullar was named in the case. Navneet says the “only grounds” her husband was made accused in the two cases was that he was an engineer. In 1994, when Bhullar was still on the run, Bhullar and Navneet decided to have a go at leaving India for Canada. While Navneet reached Vancouver safely, Bhullar, according to her, was apprehended by authorities at Frankfurt airport while he was changing planes and did not have proper documentation. Bhullar was deported to India in 1995 after Germany rejected his plea for political asylum. In 2001, a trial court in Delhi convicted and sentenced Bhullar to death in 1993 bomb attack case. Supreme Court upheld the decision in a split verdict in 2002. The senior-most judge in the three-judge panel - Justice M B Shah - had acquitted Bhullar in the split verdict. In 2006, Bhullar was acquitted in Saini attack case. The conviction of Bhullar in 2001 had Navneet fight a protracted legal battle for her husband as she shuttled between Canada and India. Bhullar filed a mercy petition before the President in 2003. In 2011, then President Pratibha Patil rejected mercy plea following which he moved Supreme Court seeking commutation of his death sentence to life imprisonment on the ground of delay in rejection of his mercy plea. The Supreme Court on March 31, 2014, while reviewing its 2013 order where it had dismissed Bhullar’s plea, commuted Bhullar’s death sentence to life on the grounds of inordinate delay in deciding his mercy petition. With the release of Bhullar from jail now imminent, 54-year-old Navneet said, “The golden years of life are gone already. The good thing is that we can be together as we grow older. And I am thankful for all who prayed for us.” Saying that she has had a “hearing loss”, she added: “We both suffer from ailments. Most of our time will be spent visiting doctors.”
