E-Paper
Chandigarh: Witnesses called for video conferencing in Sippy Sidhu murder case
Prosecution witnesses include Dr RM Tripathi who was deputy director (toxicology) of CFSL Chandigarh and Dr M Baskar who was deputy director (Physics) of CFSL Chandigarh
After the special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court had summoned two witnesses for their examination on Friday, the court has directed that they be allowed to appear through video conferencing on November 20.
Prosecution witness Dr RM Tripathi who was deputy director (toxicology) of CFSL Chandigarh had sent his request that he was going out of country on Friday itself while Dr M Baskar who was deputy director (Physics) of CFSL Chandigarh has sent his request that he has got retired and is settled in Vikravandi, Tamil Nadu and is unable to appear before the court on Friday.
Both the above said witnesses have again sent their requests on Friday to get their testimony recorded through video conferencing facility. The defence counsels as well as public prosecutor for the CBI consented to record the testimony of the above said witnesses through video conferencing.
Both the witnesses will be summoned on November 20 for recording their evidence through video conferencing.
Meanwhile, the trial has been adjourned to December 6 to record the evidence of the prosecution. Prosecution witnesses namely Dr P Siddambary and Dr Rashmi Sharma from CFSL Chandigarh and Dr HJ Trivedi, scientific officer, DFS Gandhinagar have been summoned for that date. Just 15 of total 123 witnesses have been examined as of now.
Sukhmanpreet Singh, better known as Sippy Sidhu, was shot dead at a park in Sector 27 on September 20, 2015. His family has accused Kalyani of killing him as they had turned down her marriage proposal.
Sippy was the grandson of former Justice SS Sidhu, a former Punjab and Haryana high court judge, and Kalyani is the daughter of retired Himachal Pradesh high court judge Justice Sabina. Kalyani was arrested in June 2022 and later charged with murder.
Kalyani has been charged under Sections 302 (murder), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence or giving false information to protect the offender) of the Indian Penal Code.
The sensational case was initially probed by the Chandigarh police. But in 2016, it was transferred to the CBI following protests by Sippy’s family. The central agency had at one point of time also filed an “untraced” report. But in June 2022, she was arrested by CBI and later charged with murder. She has been out on bail since September 2022.
