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Pro-Khalistan leader and Chief Warys Punjab De (DWP) Amritpal Singh and his three other accomplices, who have been lodged in Dibrugarh Central Jail in Assam, have petitioned the Punjab and Haryana High Court to annul an order from Amritsar. Deputy Commissioner where they were denied the right to consult and defend a lawyer of their choice.
The petition has not yet been brought to a hearing before the Supreme Court.
The petitioners – Amritpal Singh, Sarabjit Singh Kalsi, alias Daljit Singh Kalsi, Harjit Singh and Varinder Singh Vuji – through Advocate Navkiran Singh sought directions to the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar to arrange and ensure legal meetings for the petitioners with the lawyers of their choice. As stipulated in Article 22 of the Constitution, so that they can present an effective defense in criminal cases brought against them.
The petitioners have also sought to ensure that NSS detainees (those held under the National Security Act) have access to their lawyers by telephone in the same way as other detainees in Punjab and Assam are available.
The petitioners have been taken into custody under the NSA and have been sent to Dibrugarh Central Jail at the request of the Punjab government for security reasons.
The petition states that the Punjab government has shifted the petitioners to Dibrugarh, 2,500 km from Punjab, where restrictions have been placed on them to meet with lawyers. The petitioners are not allowed access to lawyers of their choice, and for this reason the petitioners have so far been unable to contest orders issued under the NSA or to provide a proper defense in the criminal cases registered against them in various parts of Punjab. The petitioners were detained by the National Security Agency in March/April 2023.
The petition stated that the petitioners’ counsel, Adv. Navkiran Singh, sought permission to meet the petitioners and other places in Dibrugarh Jail via email dated 3 July 2023, which was pending by the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar until 6 July 2023. When the petitioners’ counsel personally contacted the defendant To receive a call on the application he had sent, the Deputy Commissioner was alarmed and refused the lawyer’s application and permission to meet the petitioners and other detainees was denied on the grounds that the petitioners had already given their consent to the services of another appointed attorney.
The petition stated that the action of the Deputy Commissioner in denying the petitioners access to a lawyer of their choice was to deny them access to justice.
And it was stated in the petition that not only free access to lawyers of their choice needs to be guaranteed to petitioners, but also legal contact with lawyers as need from time to time by the method of communication in prison—that of the telephone—should be provided as being provided to other detenus.
Meanwhile, a separate contempt petition was filed by an associate of Amritpal Singh, in which Gurinder Singh Ogla alias Gauri Ogla sought to initiate contempt proceedings against the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar for willful disobedience to the order dated 18 April 2023, passed by the House of Representatives. Court, where he was denied access to a lawyer of his choice.
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