Kalaburagi Central Jail

Kalaburagi Central Jail, formerly Gulbarga Central Jail, is a prison in the city of Kalaburagi (Gulbarga) in north Karnataka, far from Punjab. It appears in Sikh history because Bhai Gurdeep Singh Khera, one of the prisoners the Panth calls Bandi Singhs, served his Karnataka sentence here.

Key moments

• 6 December 1990: Khera was taken into custody, in a blast and murder case registered at Bidar in 1990. The Tribune's list of Sikh prisoners (11 January 2015) says a TADA court in Karnataka announced his life sentence on 15 December 2001; a Sikh Siyasat News report of December 2013 gives the date of conviction by the Bidar designated judge as 15 December 1991.
• March 2011: according to the same Tribune list, Delhi accepted his plea for premature release in a separate blast and murder case and he was released from Tihar Jail. He remained in custody on the Karnataka sentence.
• November and December 2013: Sikh Siyasat News reported that Bhai Gurbaksh Singh Khalsa had been on hunger strike since 14 November, demanding the release of six Sikh prisoners including Khera, who had by then been held for more than 23 years in the jail at Gulbarga.
• January 2015: The Tribune recorded Khera as lodged in Central Jail, Gulbarga, with no parole taken and no jail offence on record, and as number 11 on a list of 13 prisoners that the Shiromani Akali Dal asked the Centre to act on.
• 25 June 2015: Khera was brought from Karnataka by train to Punjab and taken to Amritsar Central Jail at midnight. Police told The Tribune the midnight move was meant to avoid confrontation after Hindu radical groups threatened to protest. Khera said he was happy to be back in Punjab after 25 years.

What it means today. The jail is part of the Bandi Singh story because it held a Sikh prisoner for more than two decades, far from his home state of Punjab. In 2015 he was moved to Amritsar Central Jail.