Call the local office of your U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator. Ask to meet with your elected official, but if they are not available then simply drop by their office. Furnish them with the “Free Bhullar” package, including the letter, bullet points, report summary and report and ask them to work for Bhullar’s immediate and unconditional release from prison.

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Don't forget to encourage your family and friends to also call or visit their local elected official to request their support for freeing Bhullar.

Click here to download the letter in Word format.

Honorable ____________________,

As constituents of your district, we respectfully ask you to help preserve the life of Davinderpal Singh Bhullar, a professor from Punjab. He currently sits on death row in India, having been convicted on the sole basis of a confession coerced from him under the threat of murder by police. Based on Professor Bhullar’s poor health, the lack of justice in his trial and the violation of his human rights throughout the entire case, as well as strong evidence that he is not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted, we plead for your swift action to prevent the execution of an innocent man convicted through corrupt means.

Davinderpal’s entire family has been terrorized by Indian government. In 1991, police arrested his father, S. Balwant Singh, and his mother’s sister’s husband, Manjit Singh Sohi without cause. The two men were illicitly imprisoned, tortured and killed in custody. Their bodies were disposed of secretly. Regarding his father and uncle, Davinderpal’s brother Tejinder, who lives in Yuba City, CA with their mother, stated: “Chandigarh police picked them up from home and killed them in an illegal police custody.”

In 1993, Davinderpal was accused of bombing the New Delhi offices of All-India Youth Congress, a militant political organization. He says he did not do it and there is no evidence he was involved. During his trial, the government presented 133 witnesses, but not a single one of them identified Davinderpal as guilty of anything. The only evidence used against him was his confession.

However, the confession was made during an interrogation conducted before he was given access to a lawyer. He says the Indian police simply provided blank pieces of paper and threatened “that if he did not sign he would be terminated by the Punjab Police in a false encounter,” just as his father had been only two years earlier. The papers were “later filled by a statement written and typed in by the police.” Davinderpal filed appeals to the court to throw out the confession, but the courts simply ignored him.

In a 2003 release, Amnesty International agreed that Bhullar’s right to due process of law was egregiously violated. Corroborating allegations of a coerced confession, the release stated:

There are serious concerns that Davinder Pal Singh Bhuller may not have been given a fair trial. He was arrested under the now-lapsed Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, which has no provision for appeals to the High Court. He was found guilty solely on the strength of an unsubstantiated confession he made in police custody, allegedly under intense police pressure, which he later retracted.

In a public statement issued on June 24, Amnesty International supported rescinding Bhullar's death sentence. One concern raised by the human rights organization is that Bhullar “had no access to a lawyer during his initial detention – the period in which the police claim that he made a detailed confession of his involvement in the conspiracy to carry out the bomb attack.” Emphasizing the unreliability of a confession given under such circumstances, Amnesty International explained:

In an application retracting the alleged confessional statement, Devender Pal Singh stated that he had not made any confession, but he had been “physically manhandled, threatened with encounter extinction [extra judicial execution] and was forced to sign several blank papers”. The appellate judgment of the Supreme Court also refers to this: “According to him, he was made to sign some blank and partly written papers under threat and duress and entire proceedings were fabricated upon those documents”.

Davinderpal and his family are well educated and socially adjusted members of Indian society. He earned his mechanical engineering degree from Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College in Ludhiana in 1989 and soon began teaching as a professor at GNE Diploma College. His entire family came from a university-educated background. Balwant Singh was employed as a section officer in the city Audit Department of Chandigarh. Balwant’s wife, Opkar Kaur, who was born in Hong Kong in 1936, received her degree from Punjabi University in Patiala. What could possibly have inspired Davinderpal to be in a position where he might be accused of opposing the central government of India, violently or otherwise?

A new report by the Sikh Information Centre called “The Faces of Terror in India” highlights how the the Indian government has provoked and terrorized its minority populations into submission by framing them for state-approved or sponsored terrorist incidents. Among these are the bombing of the Samjhauta Express, which India’s Intelligence Bureau appears to have intended to stir up communal war between Muslims and Hindus. Other examples include the smuggling by India’s central intelligence agency of high-powered weapons to be used for planting on Sikhs and the staging of inflammatory acts of religious desecration like the planting of severed cow heads at Hindu temples at the behest of the ruling Congress party’s politicians.

Davinderpal has been made a victim of the Indian state’s oppression of minorities. He now awaits his execution, which will occur any day. After 16 years of imprisonment during which he was confined to a seven by nine foot cell for 22 hours a day, doctors report he has suffered for six years from depression and cervical pain and eight years from hypertension. His health has deteriorated so significantly that he was admitted to a New Delhi mental hospital. Nevertheless, he remains accused of committing terrorist acts, despite strong evidence that the truly guilty party is the Indian state.

Please contact Secretary of State Clinton and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and urge them to use all the powers of their good offices to seek Davinderpal’s immediate and unconditional release from prison.

Signed Sincerely:

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