Professor Devinderpal Singh Bhullar

Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, known as Professor Devinderpal Singh Bhullar, was an engineering professor in Ludhiana who was sentenced to death for the car bombing on Raisina Road, New Delhi, on 11 September 1993. The Supreme Court commuted the sentence to life in 2014. He is one of the Bandi Singhs, and the Delhi Government has repeatedly refused to release him. Prosecutors alleged that he belonged to the Khalistan Liberation Force; his family and friends deny it.

The bomb went off outside the Indian Youth Congress offices. Its target, Maninderjeet Singh Bitta, survived, but nine people were killed. Bhullar went to Germany in December 1994 and sought asylum, and was deported to India in January 1995. Open magazine reported that the case rested on a confession he gave in police custody and later retracted. It also reported that the EU said in 2011 that the deportation was wrong under German law, and that a Frankfurt administrative court later ruled the German decision incorrect.

Key moments

• 25 August 2001: a designated TADA court sentenced him to death. The Supreme Court upheld the sentence by 2 to 1, with the presiding judge, M B Shah, voting to acquit him.
• May 2011: the President rejected his mercy petition, filed in 2003. On 12 April 2013 the Supreme Court refused to commute his sentence.
• 31 March 2014: after the Court ruled on 21 January 2014 that unexplained delay in deciding a mercy petition can justify commutation, a bench led by Chief Justice P Sathasivam commuted his sentence to life, citing an unexplained eight year delay and his mental illness. A report of the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences found schizophrenia. His wife, Navneet Kaur, had brought the curative petition.
• June 2015: moved from Tihar Jail to Amritsar Central Jail and admitted to a psychiatry ward. His first parole came in April 2016.
• October 2019: his name was on the Union government's list of eight prisoners recommended for special remission for Guru Nanak Dev Ji's 550th birth anniversary. The release did not happen.
• 21 December 2023: Delhi's Sentence Review Board rejected his release by 6 votes to 1, although the Delhi Government had recommended it.
• October 2025: the Delhi High Court ordered a fresh assessment at the board's next meeting, with the minutes to be placed before it. Bitta wrote to Chief Minister Rekha Gupta opposing release, saying it would be a grave threat to national security.
• 23 December 2025: the board again turned down his plea. The decision was communicated in early February 2026. He has spent more than three decades in prison.

Known for: one of the best known death penalty cases tied to the Sikh struggle, argued over a TADA trial, a split Supreme Court verdict and the German deportation, and the 2014 ruling that unexplained delay can bar a hanging. In January 2024 his wife said the Centre and the state lacked the political will to release him.