AMRITSAR: SGPC chief Harjinder Singh Dhami on Thursday accused the AAP government in the national capital of becoming an obstruction in the release of Davinder Pal Singh Bhullar, a 1993 Delhi bomb blast case convict.
The president of Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) said the deferment of the release of Bhullar by the sentence review board (SRB) of the Delhi government on Wednesday is "extremely unfortunate".
The SRB headed by Delhi Home Minister Satyendar Jain on Wednesday had deferred the decision on the early release of Bhullar, who is currently lodged in the Amritsar jail.
Dhami appealed to the Centre to intervene in the matter.
"Prime Minister Narendra Modi should issue an order to the Delhi government in this regard so that the Sikhs who are lodged in jails for decades could be released soon. In case of the release of Bhullar, the Government of India should issue strict instructions to the Delhi government," he said.
"On one side, during the Punjab Assembly elections, Kejriwal and his party leaders kept on talking about taking a decision on the release of Bhullar in the forthcoming meeting of sentence review board, but on the other hand, no decision was made in the SRB meeting.
This is the truth of Kejriwal's Delhi government towards Sikhs and he will not be able to deny the same," said Dhami.
Bhullar was convicted in connection with the killing of nine people and injuring 31 in the blast.
Among those who survived the attack are former Youth Congress chief M S Bitta.
Bhullar was awarded the death penalty by a designated TADA court in August 2001 but his capital punishment was commuted to life sentence by the Supreme Court in 2014.
He was shifted to the Amritsar Central Jail from Delhi's Tihar Jail on health grounds in June 2015.