Sub-Inspector Balbir Singh

Balbir Singh was a Sub-Inspector of the Delhi Police posted on security duty at the Prime Minister's residence when Indira Gandhi was shot on 31 October 1984. He was tried with Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh and, like them, sentenced to death. On 3 August 1988 the Supreme Court acquitted him, the only one of the three accused to be freed.

The state's case: The prosecution said that since Operation Blue Star he had planned to kill the Prime Minister and had discussed it with Beant Singh, and that in the first week of September 1984 he pointed out a falcon (baaz) near her house to Beant Singh as a message from the Tenth Guru, whereupon the two did ardas together (the charge sheet, as the Supreme Court judgment quotes it). He was charged with conspiring to kill Indira Gandhi. The prosecution said he was arrested on 3 December 1984 at the Najafgarh bus stand with a slip of paper in his pocket that carried dates and the words "felt like killing". He appeared before a magistrate twice and refused to make any statement. The trial court sentenced him to death, and the Delhi High Court confirmed the sentence on 3 December 1986.

What the Supreme Court found: The Court (Justices Oza, Ray and Shetty) allowed his appeal, set aside his conviction and ordered that he be freed forthwith, and Justice Shetty acquitted him of all the charges. Justice Oza's reasons were these:

• The slip of paper named no one who was to be killed and did not connect him with the plot; the Court called it "nothing but a scrap of paper".
• The Court doubted the account of his arrest, noting that he had been held on 1 November 1984 and that his release had not been proved, and said the arrest "appears to be only a show".
• The falcon and the ardas proved nothing, since Sikhs regard a falcon as sacred and, as the High Court itself observed, any religious Sikh might offer ardas on seeing one.
• A fellow police officer, Amarjit Singh, named him only in statements of 19 and 21 December 1984, after a first statement on 24 November that said nothing against him; the Court said he had "become wiser day by day" and could not be relied on.
• His anger at Blue Star was no evidence of conspiracy: if it were, the Court wrote, all members of the Sikh community "who felt agitated over the 'Bluestar Operation' must be held as members of the conspiracy".

The Court held there was "no evidence at all" that he had agreed with the others to commit an offence, so Satwant Singh's confession could not be used against him.

What was said at the time: The Christian Science Monitor reported that he had been linked to the conspiracy by diary entries revealing meetings with the other three Sikhs and statements against the June 1984 Army action, that many legal experts considered the evidence against him weak, and that many observers had expected the Court to uphold all three convictions. Rani Jethmalani, one of the defence lawyers, said he had been "roped in by the overzealousness of the police in collusion with the government".

Remembered for: Balbir Singh is remembered in this history as the one accused the Supreme Court freed. Both the verdict against him and its reversal are part of the record of the Indira Gandhi murder case.