Release militant early: Punjab CM to HDK

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Wednesday wrote to his Karnataka counterpart for premature release of militant Gurdeep Singh Khera on the basis of his good conduct.

Singh has asked Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy to sympathetically consider Khera’s case, currently serving double life sentence in Amritsar Central Jail after having been transferred from Kalaburagi jail in 2015. The Punjab chief minister sought Kumaraswamy’s indulgence in advising the state’s Prison department for reconsideration of the matter as Gurdip Singh alias Deep, had been languishing in the jail for the last 25 years under various sections of the IPC and the TADA Act after being convicted in Delhi and Bidar bomb blast cases.

The District Magistrate in Amritsar had taken up the case with the state, which had intimated its inability under existing guidelines.