A Chandigarh court on Friday convicted Babbar Khalsa militant Jagtar Singh Tara for his role in the assassination of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh in 1995. Tara had confessed to his role in the assassination. The court will pronounce the quantum of sentence on Saturday.
In court on Saturday, Tara said he does not regret killing Singh and that if he could save thousands of lives by killing “a cruel person”, it was not wrong, his lawyer told ANI.
Beant Singh was killed in a bomb blast outside the Punjab and Haryana Secretariat in August 1995. The blast killed 17 others, including a constable who had acted as a human bomb.
Tara was charged under Section 302 (murder), Section 307 (attempt to murder) and Section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and under sections 3 and 4 of the Explosive Substances Act, according to The Indian Express.
Seven others have been convicted in the case and are serving jail terms. Tara had escaped from prison in 2004 with two other accused in the case. He was arrested from Thailand in 2014.
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