Author: adpan

INDIA CASE STUDY: DEVENDER PAL SINGH

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India Case Study: Devender Pal Singh

“It is for the accused to show and satisfy the court that the confessional statement was not made voluntarily,” Supreme Court response to Devender Pal Singh’s allegations of torture, March 2002. 

Devender Pal Singh (also known as Davinder Pal Singh Bhullar) was arrested by police at New Delhi’s international airport in January 1995 for travelling on false documents. In December 1991, his father and uncle had been abducted and killed by Punjab police (for which a number of police officials have since been indicted) looking for Devender Pal Singh in connection with a bomb attack carried out in support of an independent Sikh state in Punjab. He attempted to flee to Canada in 1994 after hearing that he was wanted by Punjab police in connection with terrorist offences, but was arrested in transit at Frankfurt airport and applied for asylum in Germany. His application was rejected and he was returned to India where he was immediately arrested at the airport. 

Police claim that following his arrest at New Delhi airport, Devender Pal Singh confessed to being involved in a 1993 bomb attack in Delhi that killed nine people – a statement which was made when he was first detained and had no access to a lawyer. Devender Pal Singh later retracted the confession, stating that he had been “physically manhandled, threatened with encounter extinction [extrajudicial execution] and was forced to sign several blank papers”. He filed a petition with the Supreme Court which refers to “coercion and torture” in extracting the alleged confession. In his statement to the Supreme Court, Devender Pal Singh said that on the way to the magistrates’ court hearing, “he was told that if he made any statement to the Court [about being tortured], he would be handed over to Punjab Police who would kill him in an encounter.” 

Devender Pal Singh was tried under the 1987 Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), a law which lapsed in 1995 following widespread criticism from national and international human rights organizations because it had been misused to arbitrarily arrest, detain and torture thousands of people. Despite its lapse, prosecutions under the Act continue against people suspected of terrorist offences committed prior to 1995. The only evidence against Devender Pal Singh was his retracted confession. 

Under ordinary Indian law, confessions are admissible as evidence only if they are made before a judicial magistrate; those made to the police are not. TADA, however, made confessions to police admissible at trial. Devender Pal Singh was taken before a judicial magistrate who was supposed to verify whether his confession was made voluntarily. However, the judicial magistrate asked only one question – whether the statement was recorded on the particular date. The magistrate did not actually see the statement, and allowed police officials to be present during the hearing.

In August 2001, a special TADA court convicted Devender Pal Singh of committing a terrorist act resulting in death, conspiracy to murder and various other offences and sentenced him to death. Ordinarily, all death sentences passed by a trial court are reviewed automatically by a High Court, with a possibility of further appeal to the Supreme Court, but under TADA, appeal is only to the Supreme Court. The conviction and death sentence were confirmed by the Supreme Court in March 2002. However, one of the three judges found Devender Pal Singh not guilty, concluding that there was no evidence to convict him and that a dubious confession could not be the basis for awarding a death sentence. A further review petition was dismissed by the same Supreme Court judges, again by a 2 to 1 majority, in December 2002. A clemency petition to the Indian President was rejected in May 2011 but on 23 August 2011 the Supreme Court admitted a petition seeking to commute the sentence because of the President’s delayed rejection of the mercy plea.”

UPDATE: In January 2014, the Supreme Court of India permitted Bhullar’s curative plea seeking to commute his death sentence to life imprisoment. On 31 March 2014, the bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Sathasivam, commuted Bhullar’s death sentence to life Imprisonment on the grounds of inordinate delay in deciding his mercy petition and his diagnosed schizophrenia. 

ADPAN: When Justice Fails – Thousands executed in Asia after unfair trials, (2011), p17-18 (https://adpandotnet.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/adpan-unfair-trials-asa-010232100-final-pdf.pdf) 

Aftab Bahadur: Child offender executed in Pakistan
Reza Mohammed Shah Bin Ahmad Shah: Mandatorily sentenced for drug offences in Malaysia
Hakamada Iwao: Likely fabricated evidence led to 45 years on death row in Japan
Yong Vui Kong: Lack of judicial discretion in Singapore
Leng Guoquan: Claims of torture and unfair trials in China
Devender Pal Sing: Claims of forced confession in India
Taiwan execution casts pall over coronavirus diplomacy with Europe

Taiwan execution casts pall over coronavirus diplomacy with Europe

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TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan’s outreach to the European Union has been overshadowed by the bloc’s displeasure at the island’s use of the death penalty, just days after a rare high-profile mention that thanked it for the donation of 6 million masks to battle the coronavirus.

Taiwan is proud of its success in reining in the virus, despite being locked out of bodies such as the World Health Organization under pressure from China, which claims the island as its own, saying it has no right to its own diplomatic ties.

“We really appreciate this gesture of solidarity,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen responded on Twitter after President Tsai Ing-wen announced the donation on Wednesday, as part of a “Taiwan can help” campaign.

“The European Union thanks Taiwan for its donation of 5.6 million masks to help fight the coronavirus,” she added.

But within a few hours of Tsai’s announcement, Taiwan’s justice ministry announced the execution of Weng Jen-hsien, convicted of killing six people in a brutal arson attack.

Rights groups in Taiwan, which was under martial law until 1987, criticised the second execution of Tsai’s administration.

“Taiwan can help. Taiwan can also kill,” said the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty.

The timing was cynical, said E-Ling Chiu, the Taiwan director of rights group Amnesty International.

“The fact that the authorities carried out this execution on the same day they received global praise for donating 10 million masks to help fight COVID-19 in Europe and the USA exposes a cynical attempt to bury bad news,” she said.

More embarrassingly for Taiwan, the European Union called the death penalty “a cruel and inhumane punishment”, and urged it to stop the practice, while also condemning Weng’s crimes.

“The European Union therefore calls on Taiwan to refrain from any future executions, to reinstate and maintain a de facto moratorium, and to pursue a consistent policy towards the abolition of the death penalty,” it said in a statement published in Taiwan on Saturday.

Two diplomatic sources told Reuters that Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry had been caught off guard by the execution news so soon after the mask announcement, and was not pleased at the timing.

The Foreign Ministry referred questions to the Justice Ministry, adding that it was facilitating communication between that ministry and Europe.

The Justice Ministry declined to add to Wednesday’s statement, in which it said the execution had been perfectly legal though acknowledging there might be “different voices” about the death penalty.

Despite Taiwan’s reputation as Asia’s most liberal democracy, the death penalty remains broadly popular, as it does in neighbouring China, where Amnesty estimates thousands are put to death every year, with the figure deemed a state secret.

Angry comments denouncing the criticism flooded the Facebook pages of Amnesty’s Taiwan branch, the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty and the EU’s office in Taiwan.

Still, executions during Tsai’s tenure are outnumbered by the figure of more than a dozen under her predecessor, and the government says it will continue to consult widely on whether to scrap the system.Taiwan has recorded 373 virus infections and five deaths.

Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence FernandezOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.– Reuters, 6/4/2020

29 years on death row, Pakistan woman suffers mental illness

29 years on death row, Pakistan woman suffers mental illness

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KATHY GANNON Associated Press 10 April 2020

FILE – In this July 8, 2006 file photo, women prisoners celebrate the news of their release on bail, at Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Kanizan Bibi, charged with murdering her employer’s wife and five children, remains a prisoner on death row for the last 29 years. She’s one of more than 600 mentally ill prisoners in Pakistan’s overcrowded prisons. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed,file)

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Kanizan Bibi was 16 when she was charged with murdering her employer’s wife and five children. The police said she was having an affair with her employer, who was also arrested and later hanged.

Until his execution in 2003, Khan Mohammad swore he and Bibi had never had an affair and had not killed anyone. He maintained his wife and children were killed as payback in a long-running land dispute with his relatives.

Yet Bibi, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2000, remains on death row, where she has been for 29 years.

The Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide is spearheading efforts along with the independent Justice Project Pakistan to get Bibi released. But the coronavirus pandemic that has shut down most of Pakistan seems to have also shut down Bibi’s chance at freedom.

She’s one of more than 600 mentally ill prisoners in Pakistan’s overcrowded prisons. A March 30 hearing to present yet another psychiatric evaluation was postponed when courts closed.

Most days Bibi can barely dress herself. She hasn’t spoken in more than a decade and her father, before he died in 2016 pleaded in a letter to Pakistan’s president to free his only child.

“My daughter was accused of murder, which was a lie,” he wrote telling of how she was tortured in police custody.

“They hung her from a fan with ropes thicker than her tiny wrists, beating her small frame with all their might. They let mice loose in her pants, which they tied from the ankles so that they could not escape. Kanizan had been terrified of mice her whole life,” he wrote. “I am a poor man and I beg that the death sentence of my daughter be converted into life in prison.”

He never received a reply.

Justice Project Pakistan this week warned of a steep rise in COVID-19 cases in Pakistan’s crowded jails. The Supreme Court of Pakistan this week agreed to release some mentally ill and disabled prisoners to ease conditions, but only those whose sentences are less than three years.

That meant Bibi had to remain in prison.

A land dispute between relatives was at the center of her case. Her employer’s cousins had been feuding with him over land and had originally been arrested for the murders. They pointed to Bibi and accused her of adultery, a crime of shame in conservative Pakistan, saying that’s why she killed her employer’s wife and children. In villages adultery can bring summary executions by family members.

Bibi was accused of involvement in the killings and charged with murder. Unsubstantiated adultery claims and a confession elicited after days of torture were enough for the judge to sentence her to death.

Delphine Lourtau, who heads the Cornell Center on Death Penalty Worldwide said the group’s research showed that women often aren’t just punished for crimes they are being charged with “but also for transgressing gender norms.”

Lourtau said three decades on death row have taken a severe toll on Bibi.

“She has lost touch with reality and is oblivious to her surroundings. There are days when she is unable to eat or dress herself. She trembles, hears voices, and is rarely able to recognize family members,” the Cornell Center said.

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This story has been corrected to show that the employer’s name was Khan Mohammad, not Sher Mohammad. – Yahoo News, 10/4/2020