Bhai Gurdeep Singh Khera

Bhai Gurdeep Singh Khera is a Sikh prisoner, in custody from 1990 to at least 2016 by the reports below, and one of those the Panth calls Bandi Singhs, prisoners whose release their supporters demand. The sources here do not cover his position after 2016.

The Tribune reported in June 2015 that he had been convicted in two separate cases under TADA, the special anti-terror law, in 1996 and 2001. He had been held in Karnataka. On the night of 25 June 2015 he was brought by train to Amritsar and taken to the jail there at midnight. Police told the paper the midnight move was meant to avoid confrontation with planned protests by Hindu radical groups. Khera told reporters he was happy to be back in Punjab after 25 years. He said all Sikh prisoners should be released at the earliest, as, in his words, they had committed no crime. Supporters held placards demanding his release.

A Sikh advocacy site, SikhPA, reported in April 2016 on a press release from a Sikh prisoner-welfare project run with the charity Sikh Relief, which the site did not independently verify. According to that release he was convicted over bomb blasts of 1990 in Delhi and Bidar and was granted parole after 26 years, with Sikh Relief acting as his guarantor. The same report notes that TADA was repealed in 1995.