By IANS
Chandigarh : A Chandigarh court Friday convicted six people for the 1995 assassination of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh in which 12 others were killed.
Marking an end to one of the longest assassination trials in India, the court acquitted one of the accused, Navjot Singh, while holding six others, including mastermind Jagtar Singh Hawara, guilty.
Others found guilty with Hawara for the assassination conspiracy are Balwant Singh, Shamsher Singh, Gurmeet Singh and Lakhwinder Singh. Another person, Naseeb Singh, was convicted under the Explosives Act.
All were part of the terrorist organisation Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), which was fighting for a separate Sikh homeland of Khalistan.
All six will be sentenced Saturday by Additional District And Sessions Judge Ravi Kumar Sondhi, who announced his decision in a special court set up inside the high security Burail jail complex here.
Paramilitary forces were deployed as security was upped around the jail complex where the judgement was made.
Twelve other people were killed when a human bomb assassinated Beant Singh at the Punjab civil secretariat in Chandigarh Aug 31, 1995.
Beant Singh was chief minister from 1992-95 and was credited along with supercop K.P.S. Gill for using an iron hand to weed out terrorism in Punjab that lasted from 1982 to 1995.
Jagtar Singh Tara, another accused in the case, is presently absconding. He was in the Burail jail and escaped along with Hawara and two others – Paramjit Singh Bheora and life convict Devi Singh – through a 108 ft long tunnel from their barrack in a sensational jailbreak January 2004.
Hawara and Bheora were later arrested by the police.
The trial in the case had started in 1996 after the Punjab and Chandigarh police arrested the main conspirators following a tip-off given by a man who had painted a white Ambassador car that was used by the terrorists to get inside the high-security secretariat complex here.
A human bomb, Dilawar Singh, blew himself up at the portico of the secretariat complex just as Beant Singh's cavalcade was about to move out.
The trial, which lasted over 11 years, saw nearly 250 witnesses being examined and over half a dozen presiding judges.