Amritsar Central Jail

Amritsar Central Jail is the central prison of Amritsar, in Punjab. It enters Sikh history through the campaign for Sikh prisoners held for cases from the 1990s, two of whom were brought back to Punjab in 2015 after many years in jails outside the state.

Key moments

• 25 June 2015: Gurdeep Singh Khera, convicted under TADA in two separate cases in 1996 and 2001 and held until then in Karnataka, was brought by train to Amritsar and taken to this jail at midnight. The Tribune reported that the midnight timing was meant to avoid confrontation after Hindu radical groups threatened to protest. Supporters with placards demanding release met him at the station, and Khera said he was happy to be back in Punjab after 25 years and that all Sikh prisoners should be released.
• June 2015: Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, a convict in the 1993 Delhi blast case whose sentence had been commuted, was moved from Tihar Jail to Amritsar Central Jail and admitted to the psychiatry ward of Guru Nanak Dev Medical College and Hospital for treatment of a mental illness (The Tribune).
• 21 December 2023: Delhi's Sentence Review Board rejected Bhullar's release. Rajya Sabha MP Vikramjit Singh Sahney says that the Delhi Government recommended release at that meeting and that the proposal was rejected by a majority of six to one. The Tribune reports this as Sahney's account.
• 19 October 2025: the Delhi High Court ordered a fresh assessment of Bhullar's case at the board's next meeting, with the minutes to be placed before it.
• 23 December 2025: the board met again and turned down his plea, one of 24 rejected among 51 cases. The decision was communicated to Tihar's Director General of Prisons by a letter of 5 February 2026, and The Tribune reports it as a rejection by the Delhi Government following the board's meeting. The Tribune did not report the board's reasons. Maninderjeet Singh Bitta had argued that release "would pose a serious threat to national security", while Sahney and former MP Tarlochan Singh pointed to Bhullar's declining health and long hospitalisation.

Why it matters. For the Panth the jail is a reminder of the Bandi Singh question: prisoners who have spent three decades in custody and whose supporters, among them Sikh MPs and former MPs, keep asking for release. Bhullar has been held in Punjab since 2015, yet his release is decided in Delhi. The Sentence Review Board refused it in December 2023 and again in December 2025, and The Tribune calls the second refusal the Delhi Government's. In Sahney's account, the Government itself had recommended release in 2023.