Navneet Kaur

Navneet Kaur is the wife of Professor Devinderpal Singh Bhullar, one of the Bandi Singhs, who was sentenced to death in August 2001 over a Delhi bomb blast of September 1993, according to LiveLaw's account of the case. She went to court for him, and the Supreme Court order of 31 March 2014 that commuted his sentence to life imprisonment came on her petition, Biharprabha News and DNA report.

Key moments

• June 2011: LiveLaw's account of the case lists a writ petition by his wife against the dismissal of his mercy petition, which he had filed in January 2003 and which was dismissed in May 2011.
• 12 April 2013: the Supreme Court rejected the challenge. It noted the delay, The Death Penalty Project says, but held that commutation for delay was not open to people convicted of "terrorism" offences.
• September 2013: she filed a curative petition against the rejection of the review petition of 12 April 2013 (Biharprabha News and DNA).
• 21 January 2014: in Shatrughan Chauhan v Union of India the Court held that unexplained, inordinate delay in deciding a mercy petition is a ground for commutation. The Death Penalty Project says that after this judgment Bhullar's wife filed an additional petition asking the Court to review its earlier refusal.
• 31 March 2014: a bench of Chief Justice P. Sathasivam and Justices R. M. Lodha, H. L. Dattu and S. J. Mukhopadhaya commuted the sentence to life imprisonment on two grounds: an unexplained delay of eight years in deciding the mercy petition, and mental illness, on a report of the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (Biharprabha News and DNA). LiveLaw says the Attorney General did not oppose commutation.
• 23 January 2024: after the Delhi Sentence Review Board rejected permanent release for her husband, she told The Tribune that it showed a "sheer lack of political will". She said she had no faith in the Centre and the state government, that she had met Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann only to get false assurances, and that she would go on fighting what she called this injustice till her last breath.

The Tribune adds that her husband was one of eight Sikh prisoners the Centre announced for special remission in 2019, on the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev, and that the release did not happen.

Remembered for: the petition on which the Supreme Court commuted a death sentence, and for her campaign since then for his release.