India SC rejects challenge to death sentence

India's Supreme Court yesterday cleared the way for the execution of a Sikh militant, rejecting his appeal in a ruling that could lead to more death sentences being carried out.
Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar from northwestern Punjab, who was convicted over a New Delhi car bombing that killed nine people in 1993, had appealed for his sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment on the grounds that he had spent two decades on death row.
He also challenged the right of the state to execute mentally ill convicts, claiming he had developed psychological problems while languishing in prison, including schizophrenia.
A Supreme Court bench ruled that neither his lengthy wait in prison nor his apparent mental problems were reasons to set aside the death sentence.
The ruling was being followed by more than a dozen other prisoners whose executions have also been held up for decades, including three men convicted over the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.
Indian courts hand down death sentences for the "rarest of rare" crimes but the country had not carried out an execution for eight years until last November when it put to death the only surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
More than 400 people are on death row in India.