NEW DELHI (PTI): The Supreme Court of India on Sept.16 summarily rejected a petition by a Sikh leader challenging the death sentence on the convicted assassins of former army chief general Arun Shridhar Vaidya.
Rejecting the petition by Akali Dal (Mann) president, Simranjit Singh Mann, challenging the death sentences awarded to Bhai Sukhdev Singh Sukha and Harjinder Singh Jinda, by the designated court in Pune and by the apex court in July this year, the court held that the petitioner “has no locus standee to invoke the court’s jurisdiction” in the matter.
The Judgement was delivered by a two-judge bench, comprising Justice A.H. Ahmedi and Justice K. Ramaswamy, who held that “there was no provision in the criminal procedure code or the rules which permits an accused to be represented by a person other than a lawyer, like the petitioner before us.”
There is further nothing on record to suggest that the two convicts have authorized the petitioner to move this court on their behalf,” the judges observed.
The court held a third party, “a total stranger to the trial commenced against the two convicts, cannot be permitted to question the correctness of the conviction recorded against them.”
Two Sikh militants Bhai Harjinder Singh Jinda and Bhai Sukhdev Singh Sukha shot at the retired general from point blank range in Pune (Maharashtra) in 1986 when he was going shopping with his wife. While the general was killed on the spot his wife was injured in the shootout.
‘The general had apparently been on the hit list of the militants as he was the chief of the army, when “Operation Bluestar” was launched in 1984 to flush out militants from the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 25, 1992
