Bhai Jagtar Singh Hawara

Jagtar Singh Hawara comes from Hawara village in Fatehgarh Sahib district. He was arrested on 21 September 1995, after the explosion of 31 August 1995 outside the Civil Secretariat in Chandigarh that killed Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh and 16 others (The Tribune). He escaped from Burail jail in January 2004, was arrested again in Delhi in July 2005, and has been in custody since then. He is a convict in the Beant Singh assassination case. A special CBI court sentenced him to death in 2007, and the Punjab and Haryana High Court commuted that to life imprisonment in 2010. Appeals by him and by the state are pending in the Supreme Court.

He is among the prisoners the Sikh community's campaigns call Bandi Singhs. The Tribune reported in August 2025, quoting advocate Jaspal Singh Manjhpur, that a 2015 list of more than 100 political Sikh prisoners had been cut to 20 Bandi Singhs, of whom 14 remain in jail. Seven of those 14 are in the Beant Singh case, and Hawara is one of them.

Key moments

• 22 January 2004: with Jagtar Singh Tara, Paramjit Singh Bheora and their cook Devi Singh, he gets out of Barrack No. 7 of the Model Jail at Burail, Chandigarh, through a tunnel of about 104 feet, the Tribune reports.
• 7 July 2005: Delhi Police arrest him in Delhi, according to police records the Tribune cites.
• 11 August 2015: a Chandigarh magistrate convicts him and Bheora of the jailbreak under Sections 120B and 224 of the Indian Penal Code, treats the time already served as the full sentence, and acquits 14 others.
• 10 November 2015: the Sarbat Khalsa at Chabba, attended by more than a lakh people according to the Tribune, names him officiating Jathedar of Sri Akal Takht Sahib in place of Giani Gurbachan Singh, with former MP Dhian Singh Mand to act for him. SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar said the resolutions were null and void, and argued that the Gurdwara Act of 1925 governs the appointment of jathedars.
• 27 September 2024: a Supreme Court bench led by Justice B R Gavai issues notice on his plea to be moved from Tihar jail to a jail in Punjab. His counsel, Colin Gonsalves, said his conduct since his re-arrest had been without blemish and that the Director General of Prisons recommended the transfer on 7 October 2016. The petition says 36 cases were registered against him and he was acquitted in all but one.
• July 2026: the High Court orders the superintendent of Central Jail No. 15, Mandoli, Delhi, to forward his parole request to the Home Secretary of the Union Territory of Chandigarh within a week, and Chandigarh to give its comments within four weeks. He sought four weeks' parole for his 81-year-old mother. His petition says he has been in custody for nearly 29 years and has never been granted parole.
• 9 October 2026: UNI reported that a six-hour supervised visit to his mother was being talked of, but that no order granting relief had been officially confirmed.

Where it stands. The 2015 appointment is contested. The Chabba assembly named him Jathedar, and the SGPC did not recognise its resolutions. The 2004 escape still shadows his case: at the 2024 hearing Justice Gavai asked how such a large tunnel could be dug in a jail. The Tribune also reports that many Bandi Singhs have completed their sentences but remain jailed because of legal ambiguities and a lack of coordination between the Centre and the state.