NEW DELHE Nov 24, Reuter: Only a Presidential pardon can now prevent the execution of Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh convicted in the 1984 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, a senior home (interior) Ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

He told Reuters the last legal challenge from lawyers for Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh collapsed on Thursday when India’s Supreme Court dismissed a petition: seeking a stay of execution on the grounds of mistrial.

”There are no more legal hurdles left to hanging them,” he said, adding that the pair’s only chance lay in a mercy plea to President Ramaswamy Venkataraman.

Only that mercy petition stands between them and the gallows,” he said.

The spokesman said Kehar Singh’s lawyers had already filed a mercy petition to the President, while several civic groups had lodged similar pleas on Satwant Singh’s behalf.

Both petitions will now be considered,” he said.

Satwant Singh, one of Gandhi’s bodyguards, was convicted of the assassination in a trial which began on May 13, 1985 in Delhi’s maximum security Tihar jail.

Kehar Singh and Balbir Singh were convicted of inspiring the murder.

Prosecution Lawyers said Satwant, along with another Sikh policeman Beant Singh, gunned Gandhi down at her Delhi residence on October 31, 1984 to avenge an army assault on their faith’s holiest shrine, the Golden Temple.

At least 6,000 people died when troops stormed the temple in Amritsar City in the Northern State of Punjab in July 1984.

Beant Singh was shot dead by other Gandhi bodyguards immediately after the assassination; BaIbir Singh was convicted but freed ‘on October 12 after the Supreme Court said prosecutors had failed to prove the case against him.

On the same day the court issued black-bordered warrants ordering 24 year old Satwant Singh and 47 year old Kehar Singh to be put to death by hanging.

The petition dismissed by the Supreme Court on Thursday was the latest in ‘a series of legal moves since then to prevent the executions from going ahead:

The two condemned men are under close guard in Tihar jail. Their lawyers were not immediately available to comment on the latest court ruling.

Article extracted from this publication >> December 2, 1988