Balwant Singh Rajoana

Balwant Singh Rajoana was convicted for the assassination of Beant Singh (former Chief Minister of Punjab) on 31 August 1995. Rajoana was sentenced to death on 1 August 2007 by a special CBI court in Chandigarh. Beant Singh was killed by Balwant Singh's associate Dilawar Singh Babbar and Balwant Singh was the backup human bomb to be used had Dilawar failed in his mission.

Although Rajoana was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death for his involvement in the assassination, his execution has been stayed multiple times due to various legal proceedings and appeals.

Early years Balwant Singh Rajoana was born in Rajoana Kalan village near Raikot in Ludhiana district of Punjab in a Sikh family on 23 August 1967. As a child, he was fond of reading ghazals, novels and poetry. The works of Surjit Paatar and Jaswant Singh Kanwal played an important role in shaping his ideology. He was adopted by Jaswant Singh in 1993, a military veteran, after his father Malkeet Singh died. Rajoana joined the Punjab Police on 1 October 1987 and was a constable but became under the influence of Babbar Khalsa International and blamed Beant Singh for extrajudicial killings of Sikh youth and believed his siblings Harpinder Singh Goldy and Amandeep Kaur were killed by the Punjab police.

Assassination of Beant Singh In Punjab between 1992 and 1995, at a time when the Khalistan separatist movement was active in the state and the Indian government was aggressively seeking to control the movement. It is alleged that, during Beant Singh's tenure, upwards of twenty-five thousand of Sikh civilians disappeared or were killed and their bodies cremated by the police in extrajudicial executions. Rajoana, who was a police constable at that time, conspired with Dilawar Singh Jaisinghvala, a police officer, to kill Beant Singh. Based on a coin toss, Dilawar Singh Jaisinghvala was chosen to be the suicide bomber with Rajoana as a backup. The attack on 31 August 1995 resulted in the death of Beant Singh and 17 others,

Conviction and death sentence Balwant Singh had "openly confessed" an involvement and strongly expressed no faith in Indian judiciary. He refused to defend himself and refused to take a lawyer. He accused Indian courts of applying dual standards of law and the Indian judicial system of shielding the culprits of 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Rajoana defended his actions citing the 1984 Operation Blue Star offensive at the Golden Temple and the killing of Sikhs during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

Rajoana was sentenced to death by a special CBI court and his execution was scheduled for 31 March 2012.

On the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak in September 2019, the Central Government recommended commuting his death sentence by the President under Section 72 of the Indian Constitution. However, the potential release of Rajoana is opposed by the family of the murdered Beant Singh, including his grandson Ravneet Singh Bittu. Rajoana sent an appeal to the Supreme Court of India. ) by Akal Takhat, the highest temporal seat of the Khalsa. Rajoana initially refused to accept the title, but later on 27 March, he accepted the title, saying that it will make him "more determined" towards his goals. Dilawar Singh Babbar was also awarded the title of "National Martyr" in the same order from Akal Takhat.