From engineering prof to terror convict

Devinderpal Singh Bhullar,now 48,had once studied mechanical engineering at Guru Nanak Engineering College,Ludhiana

Devinderpal Singh Bhullar,now 48,had once studied mechanical engineering at Guru Nanak Engineering College,Ludhiana,and later taught there. He is often referred to as Prof Bhullar in Punjab.

He became a wanted man after an attempt on the life of then Chandigarh Senior SP Sumedh Singh Saini now Punjab DGP in 1991. During the police hunt for him,his father,Balwant Singh Bhullar,a senior auditor with the government,and his uncle Manjit Singh Sohi,a field officer with NABARD,went missing and remain untraced,leading to suspicions that they were murdered. Bhullar was later acquitted of involvement in the attempt on Sainis life.

Bhullar grew up in Dialpura Bhaika village of Bathinda district. His mother,Upkar Kaur,was block development officer. Kaur and Bhullars brother,Tejinder Singh,now live in California.

The attack for which Bhullar,a member of the Khalistan Liberation Force,has been sentenced to death a blast outside the Youth Congress office in Delhi in 1993 is believed to have been targeted at then Youth Congress chief Maninderjit Singh Bitta.

Bhullar married Canadian resident Navneet Kaur in 1991. She went back to Canada months after the wedding. Bhullar tried to escape to Canada via Germany,but was caught there with a fake passport in December 1994. He applied for asylum in Germany,was turned down and deported in January 1995. In October 1997,a Frankfurt court termed this illegal under German law,which prohibited deportation of someone facing the death penalty in the receiving country.

After the Supreme Court upheld his death sentence in March 2002 and rejected his review petition that December,he filed a mercy petition the next year. President Pratibha Patil rejected it in 2011. The petition against the rejection,turned down by the Supreme Court earlier this month,had been centred around the delay it had taken for the disposal of the mercy petition.