Shaheed Bhai Kehar Singh

Kehar Singh was an assistant in the office of the Director General of Supplies and Disposals in New Delhi and, according to the charge sheet, an uncle (phoopha) of the guard Beant Singh. UPI gave his age as 56 in January 1989. He was convicted of conspiring to kill Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and was hanged at Tihar Jail on 6 January 1989, with Satwant Singh. Sikh institutions honour him as a Shaheed. The courts found him a conspirator; his lawyers and critics say the case against him was circumstantial and weak. He is a different man from Bhai Kehar Singh Rajput, a Sikligar figure of Sikh tradition.

The state's case: The prosecution said that after Operation Blue Star Kehar Singh turned Beant Singh, and through him Satwant Singh, to "religious bigotry", made them take Amrit at the gurdwara in Sector VI, R.K. Puram, on 14 and 24 October 1984, and took Beant Singh to Sri Darbar Sahib on 20 October (the charge sheet, as the Supreme Court judgment quotes it). The judgment called the evidence of Beant Singh's widow, Bimla Khalsa (Bibi Bimal Kaur Khalsa), the material evidence against him, though she had been declared hostile. He was arrested on 30 November 1984, according to the judgment, and tried with Satwant Singh and Balbir Singh inside Tihar Jail. The trial court convicted him on 22 January 1986 and sentenced him to death (UPI), and the High Court confirmed the sentence on 3 December 1986.

What the Supreme Court found: On 3 August 1988 the Supreme Court (Justices Oza, Ray and Shetty) dismissed his appeal. The case against him was one of circumstances, and the judges reasoned from them. Justice Shetty set aside some of the prosecution's evidence, among it witnesses to his anger over Blue Star and a pamphlet found in his office drawer. He relied on Bimla Khalsa's account of a whispered talk between Kehar Singh and Beant Singh on the roof on 17 October 1984; the Amritsar trip of 20 and 21 October, when the two men kept away from their families; Beant Singh's gold kara and ring, recovered from Kehar Singh's house; and Kehar Singh's reply to an office colleague on the morning of the shooting, "Whosoever would take confrontation with the Panth, he would meet the same fate". Summing up, Justice Shetty wrote that his close and continued association with Beant Singh, his exclusion of Bimla Khalsa from their company and conversation, the secret talk, the kara and ring, and his post-crime conduct, taken together, were "stronger as evidence of guilt than even direct testimony", while accepting that taking Amrit "by itself may not have any sinister significance". Justice Ray held the conspiracy proved "without any reasonable doubt".

The criticism at the time: UPI reported in December 1988 that his lawyers called the evidence against him "flimsy and circumstantial" and said he was "being used as a scapegoat by the government". In January 1989 it reported that Kehar Singh denied the conspiracy, saying all the evidence against him was circumstantial and that hanging was too severe a penalty for conspiracy, and that his attorney Ram Jethmalani asked the Delhi High Court to declare the President's decision "void, illegal and unconstitutional". Sunil Gupta, the Tihar law officer, writes in Black Warrant that the evidence against him was a farce, according to Kanwar Pal Singh's review in Sikh Siyasat News, which adds that police made Bimla Khalsa their prime witness.

Clemency and the hanging: UPI reported that President R. Venkataraman rejected his plea for clemency on 30 November 1988. On 16 December 1988, in Kehar Singh v. Union of India, a bench led by Chief Justice Pathak dismissed his petition against the President's decision, and the President rejected the plea again on 2 January 1989. Kehar Singh was hanged with Satwant Singh on 6 January 1989, and a Home Ministry official said he declared his innocence (Deseret News). According to Gupta his family filed repeated mercy petitions and his body was not given to them; Damdami Taksal's biography says the two men themselves refused to ask for mercy.

The Panthic account: Sikh institutions place the act in the context of the army attack on Sri Akal Takht Sahib and Sri Harmandir Sahib in June 1984. At the anniversary on 6 January 2015, Jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh of Sri Akal Takht Sahib called Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh "great martyrs" (Sikh Siyasat News). The SGPC's report of a martyrdom anniversary at Sri Darbar Sahib titles him Shaheed Bhai Kehar Singh.

Remembered for: In Sikh memory he is Shaheed Bhai Kehar Singh, honoured with Satwant Singh and Beant Singh. The courts held that he was a conspirator who inspired the killing of a Prime Minister; his lawyers and Gupta say the proof against him was too thin. Both views are held, and both are recorded here.