Bitta Case: SC rejects death convict's plea

NEW DELHI: Sentenced to death for killing nine persons during an attempt on the life of then Youth Congress president M S Bitta in 1993, Devinder
Pal Singh has lost another legal battle seeking review of the Supreme Court's 2:1 judgment.
The attempt on Bitta's life took place when five members of the Khalistan Liberation Front detonated a bomb on September 7, 1993, outside the Raisina Road office of the Indian Youth Congress in New Delhi. Nine persons were killed and 29 injured in the blast. A Bench of Chief Justice V N Khare and Justices S Rajendra Babu, S S M Quadri, B N Agrawal and Arijit Pasayat dismissed Devinder Pal Singh's curative petition seeking permission for ``hearing and raising of additional grounds''.
The only course open for the convict now to escape the gallows is to petition the President seeking commutation of the death sentence to life imprisonment.
The court had earlier dismissed his petition seeking review of last year's judgment awarding him the death penalty for the assassination attempt in which a car bomb was used by the killers.
In a majority decision delivered by a three-judge Bench in March last year, the court had held that the explosion of a car bomb was an act of terrorism.
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