A summary of the Bhullar case
Bhullar was born in Jalandhar, India, on May 26, 1965.
1991 - In the city of Chandigarh, Bhullar is accused of involvement in an attack on Indian police, who visit his house, fail to find him there and so abduct his father and maternal uncle, both of whom are then tortured to death in police custody.
September 1993 - Bhullar is accused of bombing the All-India Youth Congress office in New Delhi.
December 1994 - Pleading his innocence, yet fearing torture and an unfair trial if he remained in India, Bhullar seeks political asylum in Germany.
January 18, 1995 - After Germany rejects Bhullar’s asylum plea, he is deported to India and handed over to Indian police.
January 1995 - An Indian police interrogation of Bhullar, whom they allegedly tortured, produces a coerced confession of his involvement in the September 1993 bombing.
April 1995 - From jail, Bhullar appeals to the court that he was “made to sign on blank pieces of paper, which were later filled by a statement written and typed in by the police, under threat that if he did not sign he would be terminated by the Punjab Police in a false encounter.”
October 6, 1997 - A court in Frankfurt, Germany rules that Bhullar’s deportation was illegal under German law, which forbids deportation of someone facing torture or the death penalty in the receiving country. The court states: “Overruling the decision of 21st December 1994 (case No.: E 193094-436), [Germany] shall be obligated to determine that there are legal obstacles as defined in section 53 of the Aliens Act for a deportation of [Bhullar] to India.... A deportation obstacle is given, if it can be established positively that the alien is threatened with an individual concrete risk of torture in the country, to which he is to be deported.... There is another deportation obstacle as defined by section 53, paragraph 2, sentence 1 of the Aliens Act as the complainant is prosecuted for offences in India which are threatened with the death penalty.”
2000 - After years of imprisonment, Bhullar’s case is finally sent to trial. No evidence is offered of Bhullar’s involvement and not one of the 133 witnesses produced by the prosecution identified him as guilty of anything.
August 2001 - Bhullar is convicted and sentenced to death based solely on his coerced confession.
August 2002 - The presiding judge on a three-judge panel of the Indian Supreme Court acquits Bhullar, yet the other two uphold his conviction. Defending Bhullar’s death sentence, the two judges state that proof “beyond reasonable doubt” should be a “guideline, not a fetish.”
2003 - An Amnesty International release states: “There are serious concerns that Davinder Pal Singh Bhuller may not have been given a fair trial.... 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.”
December 2010 - Cables published by Wikileaks reveal that the U.S. embassy in Delhi has recently concluded that India “condones torture” and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has advised U.S. officials that Indian authorities commonly employ electrocution, beatings and sexual humiliation to torture detainees. Noting that all branches of India’s security forces engage in such misconduct, one ICRC cable states: “The abuse always takes place in the presence of officers and ... detainees were rarely militants (they are routinely killed).”
"What Can I Do?" Action Items
It is up to us as individuals to spread the Free Bhullar campaign through emails, phone calls and social media. Without your action, there will be no action.
Remember to emphasize the following facts when demanding Bhullar’s immediate and unconditional release:
a) The prosecution presented zero evidence against Bhullar and not one of the 133 eyewitnesses connected him to this or any other crime.
b) Without any proof he was even involved, Bhullar has already served nearly two decades in prison, most of it in solitary confinement in torturous conditions.
c) Devinderpal Singh is suffering from severe physical and mental illness because of his torture.
d) The presiding judge on a three-judge panel of the Indian Supreme Court acquitted Bhullar.
e) In the history of India, no one has ever been executed on a split verdict from the Supreme Court.
f) Indian Police had already tortured and killed his father, maternal uncle and a friend, so Bhullar feared for his own life in India. He asked for asylum in Germany but was deported back to India. However, a German court later ruled the deportation as a mistake and asked India to preserve his life per the EU charter and UN conventions.
So what can you do?
1) Sign the "Petition to Free Davinderpal Singh Bhullar." Ask all your family and friends to also sign it. Please mail completed petition signature sheets to:
Committee to Free Bhullar
PO Box 392
Lathrop, CA 95330
2) Download, read and then distribute the full "Free Bhullar" package here.
3) (U.S. residents only) Identify your U.S. congressional representative, then print, sign and mail, fax or hand-deliver the letter to your representative.
4) (U.S. residents only) Print, sign and mail or fax the letter to U.S. President Barack Obama.
5) (U.K. residents only) Contact your local government officials and Members of Parliament to request their support for an Early Day Motion (EDM) expressing support for Bhullar.
Locate your UK elected official here.
Info: EDM 1930 was tabled by Fabian Hamilton, MP, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for UK Sikhs (APPG). The motion calls for the Indian authorities to immediately lift the death sentence on Devinderpal Singh and also urges the UK Government to demand his immediate release.
6) (Canadian residents only) Write and call your local Member of Parliament to request they support MP Jack Layton, who wrote a letter urging the Prime Minister to take up Bhullar’s cause.
Info: MP Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP), has joined the issue by writing a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Bhullar’s behalf. He asks Canada to oppose the death penalty in India and called Devinderpal Singh’s trial “questionable” and his conviction “doubtful.”
Email Jack Layton to thank him for addressing the issue: Layton.J@parl.gc.ca
Email John Baird, Minister of Foreign Affairs, to request he support Layton: Baird.J@parl.gc.ca
Email Liberal leader Bob Rae to request he support Layton: Rae.B@parl.gc.ca
7) (European residents only) Info: The European Union High Representative, Catherine Ashton, and the German Ambassador to India, Thomas Matussek, have appealed to India not to execute Bhullar.
Email Thomas Matussek in India to thank him for pressing the issue: https://new-delhi.diplo.de/Vertretung/newdelhi/en/Kontakt.html
Email Catherine Ashton to thank her for appealing on Bhullar’s behalf: COMM-SPP-HRVP-ASHTON@ec.euro
A letter to your U.S. congressional representative
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.
Click here to locate your U.S. Representative.
Click here to locate your U.S. Senator.
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.
The Letter: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:
Name:
Zip:
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