As death row prisoner Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar runs out of options, wife Navneet tells PRITHA CHATTERJEE she can't give up

Devinder doesn't recognise her anymore. "I know he does not know me, but there is no substitute to seeing him alive, in front of me," says navneet

She calls him Professor. In the 22 years of their marriage, they have been together just three months. The term Navneet Bhullar uses for death row prisoner Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar though has little to do with the brief time they got to know each other. As the 48-year-old battles courts and governments to hold on to a husband who is slowly losing his mind, it speaks perhaps of a yearning that things had turned out differently.

Devinder's only "fault", Navneet says, is that he was an engineer and professor who felt strongly about his students who went missing during the dark days of militancy in Punjab. And that he spoke openly about it.

Navneet was 26 when in September 1991 she got married toin her wordsthe "tall, strapping, soft-spoken, shy" professor of mechanical engineering at Ludhiana's Guru Nanak Engineering College.

"Those were bad times, with young Sikhs getting picked up every day over their alleged involvement in Khalistani terrorism. The professor was eager to move out, and was looking for new jobs. He had offers from a very good company in Chandigarh," she recalls. The second of three sisters, and the daughter of a government employee from Amritsar, Navneet looked forward to following her husband out of Ludhiana.

However, barely three months into their marriage, Devinder was suspected of being involved in a bomb attack on Sumedh Singh Saini, the current Punjab DGP who was then SSP, Chandigarh. Navneet says he had no role in it. "He had been vocal about some of his students who went missing from college, like hundreds of young Sikhs who had gone missing those days, so they wanted to silence him. Just because he is an engineer, they accused him of setting off remote-controlled bombs," she says.

Navneet reiterates what she said in a writ petition filed jointly with the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee in the Supreme Court in 2011, where she sought commutation of his death sentence to life over the President's delay in addressing his mercy petition filed in 2003. "The police raided our home. Since Professor was not there, they picked up his father Balwant Singh, his uncle Manjit Singh and a cousin of his. We never saw them again. They were picked up without any FIR or court order and tortured to death," Navneet says, brushing away tears.

Both Balwant and Manjit were senior government employees  the former was posted as auditor, exams, and Manjit worked at the RBI.

Navneet's father was also picked up, but released a month and a half later. "He came home a different man. He was beaten up brutally... hurt beyond measure. He can't walk properly, and psychologically, he was never the same," Navneet says.

Devinder spent three years underground, fearing the same fate as his father. "We never spoke, we never met. He did not dare come to me because we were afraid the police would finish him off. I didn't know if he was alive, or that I would hear about his death on TV. We were just separated like that, while the whole family was still trying to accept that three of our own had disappeared," she says.

During this period, she took up a job as a hostel wardenit was the first time she stepped out of home to make ends meet.

In 1993, Youth Congress president M S Bitta's entourage was attacked in Delhi, leaving nine dead and Bitta injured. Again, Devinder was named. "That too was a remote-controlled bomb. Because my husband was an engineer, they associated it with him, saying it was similar to the 1991 attack, without any proof of his involvement," Navneet recalls.

A trial court in Delhi convicted Devinder of the crime in 2001 and sentenced him to death. The decision was upheld by the Supreme Court in a split verdict in 2002, with the senior-most judge in the three-judge panelJustice M B Shahacquitting him. In May 2011, his mercy petition was rejected by the President.

In 1994, after three years of separation and with Devinder still on the run, the couple arranged to meet in Canada, hoping to start a new life there. "I reached Vancouver safely, but he was picked up in Frankfurt while he was changing planes. He did not have proper papers. I was devastated...I had been so close to meeting my husband, but that chance was snatched away," she says. In 1995, Devinder was deported to India.

For the next six years, as Devinder fought it out in courts, Navneet had to start life from scratch in Canada. "I got my parents to join me, waited to get citizenship, and had to think about how to earn a living," she says. She joined a nursing course and did double shifts to earn enough to make trips to India. "My regular job entailed one shift only, but I did an optional extra shift. A flight to Delhi would cost $1,200. I had to be able to afford it to see the Professor," Navneet says. Meanwhile, Devinder's mother moved with her younger son to the US.

During this period, Navneet admits, her family repeatedly told her to drop the case, to start a new life. "His family suffered too, but in such cases it's the spouse who bears the brunt. My mother is unwell. She needs a second bypass now, and there are those in my family who say I should go back to Canada," she says.

Given her frequent trips to Delhi and long absence from work, Navneet has had to quit her permanent job but continues to work in shifts at the hospital whenever she is in Canada.

In 2001, Navneet met Devinder for the first time since he was arrested, in Tihar jail. She says he was confident of acquittal. "He insisted there was no evidence against him, and spoke about the confession that was extracted under torture." He also talked about fellow prisoners and how some of them could not afford clothes. That was a cause for fights between them, Navneet laughs, for Devinder would give away the clothes she brought for him from Canada to other inmates. "Jackets, blankets, sweaters...he would just give them away and then ask for new ones. I took so much effort buying what I thought he would like. I was very angry."

In 2006, Devinder was acquitted in the case of the attack on police officer Saini, but he remained in jail in the 1993 blasts case.

What pained Devinder, says the wife, was that he was denied permission to do an MBA from jail. "He had arranged for books on correspondence, but they did not let him study. Perhaps if he had managed (to study), his mind would not have been so affected. He was always an academic man," Navneet says.

It was in the mid 2000s that Devinder first started showing symptoms of psychiatric illness. An alarmed Navneet rushed off pleas, filed review petitions, approached politicians within and outside the country, knocked on doors of human rights activists. She lobbied with members of the Sikh community to raise Devinder's case in the parliaments of Canada and Germany. The German president and foreign affairs minister have written to the Indian government twice to reconsider the death penalty to Devinder (he was extradited from Germany, a country that is against death penalty).

Now admitted at the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences in Delhi for depression and psychosis, her husband has become a shadow of the confident man he once was, Navneet says. "He has shrivelled, lost so much weight. He does not want to eat or bathe. He does not know who he is, and speaks of being a minister and calls out for his chopper," she cries.

However, Navneet clutches on to straws, like a recent incident. "I always thought he was an intelligent man, with senses most of us are not blessed with. Recently, when I went to see him, he started talking of an earthquake which could lead to a lot of casualties. When I came out of the hospital room, I heard there had been tremors in the capital that day. It made no sense, but to my mind, it reaffirmed that the man I married is still lurking somewhere inside him," she says.

"There is the legal side, and then there is the humanitarian side, and we have been let down on both," Navneet adds. "Legally, despite a split judgment on his death penalty, no review bench was ever set up. Internationally, this has never been the case. On humanitarian grounds, he is a psychiatric patient who has already suffered years of delay by the authorities in deciding his mercy petition."

She is now planning to approach the families of those who lost their lives in the 1993 blast, to seek their help. "I am also trying to make our leaders and other political parties see that we as a country will lose face before the global community if Professor Bhullar is hanged."

Devinder doesn't recognise her anymore, forget appreciating her fight for him. But Navneet can't give up. "After his mercy plea was rejected in April, the authorities cut down our visit to 10 minutes at a time. Before that, I would sit in his room for hours, stroking him, touching him, nodding to whatever he said. I know he does not know me, but there is no substitute to seeing him alive in flesh," she says, breaking down.

Navneet might have lost what she says should have been the "green period" of their married life, the chance to have children or build a home together. "But I still hope that since I have fought for so long, we will have the chance to grow old together. It happens in the movies. I hope we will also see a happy ending."

CHRONOLOGY OF A CASE

December 1991:

Named in a car bomb attack on then SSP Chandigarh and present Punjab DGP S S Saini

September 1993:

Named in a car bomb attack on then Youth Congress president M S Bitta's convoy

January 1995:

Bhullar's plea for political asylum in Germany rejected, he is deported

2000:

Trial begins in Bhullar's case

August 2001:

Bhullar convicted, sentenced to death

December 2002:

SC dismisses Bhullar's review petition in a split verdict

January 2003:

Bhullar files mercy petition to the President

March 2003:

SC dismisses Bhullar's curative petition

May 2011:

President Pratibha Patil rejects Bhullar's mercy plea. He moves SC seeking commutation of his death sentence to life on the ground of delay in rejection of his mercy plea

April 2013:

SC dismisses Bhullar's plea for commutation of his death sentence to life

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