Trial for the Beant Singh assassination at Burail Jail

Who: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which conducted the prosecution; a Special CBI court sitting inside Burail Jail, Chandigarh; the accused, among them Jagtar Singh Hawara, Balwant Singh Rajoana, Shamsher Singh, Gurmeet Singh and Lakhwinder Singh; the Punjab and Haryana High Court; and the Supreme Court. The case concerned the killing of Chief Minister Beant Singh on 31 August 1995, which has its own page.

What: The accused were tried for murder, attempt to murder and conspiracy under sections 302, 307 and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code and sections 3 and 4 of the Explosive Substances Act, as Sessions Case No. 2-A of 1995 (Supreme Court order of 24 March 2022).

• 1996 to 2005: the trial was held in Burail Jail. By August 2005 The Tribune said the case had been “hanging for over nine years”. It had not sat for months after the transfer of the Special CBI Judge, Balbir Singh, and Hawara's escape of January 2004 had added to the delay.
• 27 July 2007: The Tribune reported six convicted after an 11-year trial that saw six judges replaced and a jailbreak. Navjot Singh was acquitted for want of sufficient evidence.
• 31 July 2007: Judge R. K. Sondhi, in a judgment of 1,022 pages, sentenced Hawara and Rajoana to death and Shamsher Singh, Gurmeet Singh and Lakhwinder Singh to life. The Tribune's editorial said the court divided the convicts into a hard core and those who joined through inducement, following State of Tamil Nadu v. Nalini. The Supreme Court's order of 2022 records that, after recording their conviction, the trial court sentenced Rajoana and Hawara to death.
• 12 October 2010: a High Court bench of Justices Mehtab Singh Gill and Arvind Kumar commuted Hawara's death sentence to life, saying he “shall not be released from the prison for the rest of his life”. It called him the organiser of the crime and “a tool in the hands of Mehal Singh and Wadhawa Singh (proclaimed offenders)”, and his case “a borderline case for death sentence”, though the Tribune adds that the bench found no evidence of where he was on 31 August 1995. It confirmed Rajoana's death sentence, saying that with his three confessional statements there was “no other alternative”.
• March 2012: a Chandigarh court fixed 31 March for Rajoana's hanging, which the Union Home Ministry stayed on 28 March (see the page on the 2012 death warrants).
• 17 March 2018: Jagtar Singh Tara, tried separately, was sentenced at Burail to life until natural death; the CBI had sought death.

Where: A Special CBI court inside Burail Jail, Chandigarh; the Punjab and Haryana High Court; and the Supreme Court in New Delhi.

Why it mattered: The Supreme Court recorded in 2022 that Rajoana “had not challenged his death sentence”, that Hawara's appeal was still pending, and that because the CBI conducted the prosecution the authority on commutation and remission is the Central Government. That court record underlies the later mercy petition and Supreme Court proceedings over Rajoana, covered on his page.