Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, who is serving life imprisonment for his involvement in the 1993 Delhi bomb blast case, was on Friday admitted to the psychiatry ward of Guru Nanak Dev hospital in Amritsar, Punjab.
Bhullar, lodged in Delhi's Tihar jail, was shifted to Amritsar Central Jail in view of his medical condition, Hidustan Times reports.
Teams of Delhi and Punjab police escorted Bhullar, who was in an ambulance, to Amritsar jail from where he was taken to the hospital, according to The Tribune report.
Sikh militant Devender Singh Bhullar taken to Central Jail in Amritsar. pic.twitter.com/HVVoQSGERE
— ANI (@ANI_news) June 12, 2015
A team of psychiatrists headed by Dr PD Garg confirmed his mental condition, based on which the decision to admit him to the psychiatry ward was taken.
Bhullar's transfer (to Amritsar) was approved by Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung. His wife Navneet Kaur had requested Tihar jail authorities for his transfer, India Today reports.
A week before his transfer, former Congress leader Maninderjeet Singh Bitta, who survived the 1993 blast, met Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and urged him to turn down Navneet Kaur's request, saying Bhullar could use the opportunity to flee from Amritsar jail.
The bomb blast and arrest
A remote-controlled bomb in a car outside the office of the Indian Youth Congress had exploded on 11 September, 1993, killing nine people. Bitta, who was the target of the blast, survived with injuries on his chest.
Investigatons revealed Bhullar's involvement in the blast, but he fled to Germany in December 1994 to seek political asylum, which was rejected. Germany extradited him back to India, following which he was arrested and prosecuted.
He was held guilty in 2001 and awarded death punishment. But the Supreme Court commuted his death sentence to lifetime imprisonment in March 2014.
