Sikh detainee Waryam Singh walks free

Chandigarh : Waryam Singh, one of the 49 Sikh detainees for whom Sikh activist Surat Singh Khalsa had launched a struggle for over two years now, was set free today after spending almost 26 years in a jail.
He is the first among the listed detainees to be walk free. Earlier, two life convicts, Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar and Gurdeep Singh Khera, were transferred to Amritsar jail.Waryam Singh, a TADA life convict for conspiracy in a blast case in 1990, was released on the basis of good conduct at the special intervention of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and the state’s Jail Minister Balwant Singh Ramoowalia. UP goes to Assembly polls along with Punjab next year. The incarceration of a number of such convicts for so many years has become a sensitive issue not just in Punjab but abroad also.Ramoowalia told TNS that Waryam Singh was released on parole in December. “After observing his conduct during the parole and on consideration of humanitarian grounds, Yadav approved his release today,” he said. Ramoowalia, who had left the SAD last year to become a minister in the Yadav cabinet, had first moved the file of Waryam’s release last September.
His release may open a Pandora box for the other states like Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu where a number of Sikh detainees were lodged for several decades. Though the Punjab government has been facing the brunt of the protest for release of the detainees, it has been trying to convince them that only the state government where a detainee is lodged had the powers to remit the sentences.Yadav said Sikhs from across the world had been sending representations to him about the release of Waryam Singh. He said his Jail Minister informed him that it was inhuman to keep someone behind bars for so many years in the name of life imprisonment.Advocate Jaspal Singh Manjhpur, who is also spearheading the movement for the release of the detainees said the freeing of Waryam has shown that Punjab and other state governments, especially the Centre were empowered to follow suit similar cases.He said Waryam should have been released after 14 years in jail but he was made to spend double the time due to political reasons, “That is why we call them political prisoners. The government should compensate him for loss of his life, family and land because of his long imprisonment.”