CHITRADURGA: Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Wednesday wrote to his Karnataka counterpart for premature release of militant Gurdeep Singh Khera on the basis of his good conduct. Amarinder has asked H D Kumaraswamy to sympathetically consider the case of Khera, currently serving double life sentence in Amritsar Central Jail, after having been transferred from Kalaburagi jail in 2015.
The Punjab Chief Minister, in his letter, sought Kumaraswamy’s indulgence in advising the Prisons Department of his state for reconsideration of the matter as Gurdip Singh alias Deep, son of Banta Singh, had been languishing in the jail for the last 25 years under various sections of the IPC and the TADA Act after being convicted in Delhi and Bidar bomb blast cases.
It may be noted that the District Magistrate of Amritsar had earlier taken up the case with the Government of Karnataka, which had intimated their inability under existing guidelines. The 55-year-old Khera was in Kalaburagi jail in Karnataka from 1990 to 2015. He belongs to Jallupur Khera village near Rayya in Amritsar district of Punjab.
In April 2016, he was released on a six-week parole from Amritsar central jail. Khera was booked under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (TADA) and was later sentenced to life imprisonment in two different cases registered in 1996 in Delhi and Bidar in Karnataka.
Letter to Rajasthan Chief Minister
Amarinder has also written to Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundahra Raje for expediting the transfer of Sikh political prisoner Harnek Singh Bhap, son of Tara Singh, currently lodged in Central Jail Jaipur, to a suitable prison in Punjab. He pointed out that Director General of Rajasthan Police had already forwarded his recommendation to the Department of Home in June this year and the final approval was awaited.
Recently, a Sikh delegation had approached the state government, through cabinet minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa, with a request to raise the issue with the Rajasthan government.