A senior counsel said his client, Balwant Singh Rajoana , condemned for the assassination of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh in 1995, may be suffering from ‘death row phenomenon’ — trauma caused by a prolonged wait for execution on the death row — even as the Supreme Court asked who exactly was to blame for the delay.

“I do not know if he is in his senses,” senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi told a Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta.

Rajoana has been in prison for three decades, of which 12 were spent in solitary confinement. He has been on death row since 2007.

Justice Mehta asked why the execution had not been carried out for so long. “Who is to be blamed for that?” the judge asked.

The case had last come up early in 2025, when the apex court had urged the Union go

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