New Delhi, India, Nov. 1, Reuter — India’s Supreme Court on Tuesday extended a stay of execution on two Sikhs sentenced to death over the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984.

The ruling came the day after the fourth anniversary of the death of Gandhi, who was shot by two of her bodyguards after she ordered the army storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhdom’s holiest shrine.

Other guards killed one of the assassins, Beant Singh, after he had surrendered. Fellow-assassin Satwart Singh was also shot but survived and now faces the gallows with Kehar Singh.

Black warrants ordering the execution to be carried out at New Delhi’s maximum-security Tihar jail were signed by a judge on September 12.

But Satwart’s lawyer successfully sought a stay of execution arguing that his client should not hang while a Magistrates court case remained pending against the bodyguards who shot him and Beant Singh.

Lawyers for Kehar Singh, who was accused of masterminding the assassination, have also appealed for clemency to President Ramaswahy Venkatarahan.

The press trust of India news agency said the Supreme Court would reconsider its postponement of the hanging on November 7.

 

Bomb Blasts Kill 17 In Northern India

 

Srinagar, India, Nov. 1, Reuter — at least 17 people were killed and 50 injured “on Tuesday when three bombs explode in India’s two troubled boarder states of Punjab and Jammu and Kashnir, police said.

In one incident near the north-west Indian City of Jammu, 11 people were killed and 34 injured when a bomb explode on a crowded bus which had set out from Pathankot in Punjab.

Earlier two bombs explode simultaneously in busy market areas of Pathankot, killing six people and injuring 16.

In separate incidents since Monday night, gunmen shot and killed four men in Ludhiana district and two women and four men at the home of a village Herdman in Ferozepur.

More than 2,100 people have died so far in the ongoing violence in Punjab in 1988, compared with 1,230 during the whole of 1987.

Article extracted from this publication >> November 4, 1988