Khalistani militant Jagtar Tara pleads for mercy killing, cites backache

Jagtar Singh Tara, accused in the Beant Singh assassination case, has moved an application in the ongoing trial stating that he was physically unfit due to severe backache and sought permission for euthanasia, or mercy killing.
In a letter submitted before the trial court during the hearing of the case, Tara said he has a lot of pain in the back which was in turn making his life “miserable”. The matter will come up for hearing on April 6 now.
Tara, lodged in Chandigarh’s Burail jail, is among the main accused of assassinating the then Punjab chief minister Beant Singh in a bomb blast outside the Punjab secretariat on August 31, 1995.
Jagtar Singh Hawara, Jagtar Singh Tara, Paramjit Singh Bheora, Gurmeet Singh, Lakhwinder Singh, Shamsher Singh, Naseeb Singh, Balwant Singh Rajoana and Navjot Singh, all seven, were accused by the CBI. The court in 2007 had convicted five persons, including Hawara.
Owing allegiance to Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), Tara (42) had purportedly confessed to his role in Beant Singh’s assassination in a court submission last year. He had said that he, along with his accomplices, planned the murder of Beant Singh for which he doesn’t have any regret. In a letter to additional sessions judge JS Sidhu, submitted on August 23 last, Tara stated: “I was there with Balwant Singh Rajoana and Dilawar Singh. We don’t regret killing Beant Singh, but we are pained at the loss of other innocent lives.” The letter was written days before the death anniversary of Beant Singh.
Tara, along with Hawara, Bheora, and a man named Devi Singh, who used to cook for them in Burail jail, had escaped after digging a 109 feet long tunnel in January 2004.
Arrested in a joint operation of central agencies and Thailand police, he was deported from Bangkok and brought to India on January 16, 2015, by a team of Punjab police. The trial against him started in the additional district and sessions court on July 8, 2016.