Ludhiana, Punjab (April 13, 2013): According to a news report by Times of India (TOI): “[t]wo years after Devinderpal Singh Bhullar was deported from Germany, an administrative court in Frankfurt had held that the 1995 deportation order was “unlawful” as he faced threat of torture and death penalty in India for the 1993 bomb attack in New Delhi that killed nine people and injured many others”.
“The order from the court in 1997 followed a campaign by NGOs including Amnesty International that German laws prohibited deportation to a country where the any accused faced death sentence. The court, however, had upheld the legality of denial of political asylum to him”, the news reads further.
After then President Pratibha Patil rejected Bhullar’s constitutional review petition in 2011, Germany had opposed the death sentence and took up the issue with the external affairs ministry on at least two occasions through its embassy in India.
“The European Union has come out very strongly against capital punishment. As far as this individual case in Germany is concerned, I think our position has not changed,” ambassador Thomas Mattusek was quoted by German media as saying in 2011. “We would ask the Indian government for mercy and not to implement the capital punishment. This position is not new and consistent with our overall human rights policy,” he had said.
