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Protest petition by Sippy Sidhu’s kin non-maintainable: Court
Sippy’s brother had filed the protest petition, seeking action against Chandigarh police inspector Poonam Dilawari and former ASP Guriqbal Singh Sidhu for allegedly destroying evidence in the case
Terming it non-maintainable, a local court has dismissed the protest petition filed by the kin of Sippy Sidhu, a national shooter and lawyer who was shot dead at a Sector-27 park in September 2015.
Sippy’s brother, Jasmanpreet Singh, had filed the protest petition (which allows one to raise an objection against the conclusion of a probe), seeking action against Chandigarh police inspector Poonam Dilawari and former assistant superintendent of police Guriqbal Singh Sidhu for allegedly destroying evidence in the case.
The court also merged the protest petition with the supplementary report filed by the CBI.
After hearing arguments on the protest petition filed by Sidhu’s family, the court of CBI special judicial magistrate Sukhdev Singh observed that the situation when the petition was filed was altogether different.
At that time, the CBI had not filed any final report implicating any accused in the offence. Rather, they had filed an untraced report, stating that CBI did not find sufficient and cogent evidence against any culprit, including Kalyani.
“However, the situation has drastically changed, as CBI has filed an incriminating report against accused Kalyani under Section 173 (8) of the CrPC. Both the untraced report and present supplementary report have been clubbed together. Therefore, this court is now having an incriminating challan against only one accused namely Kalyani Singh,” the court observed, while saying that the protest petition had now become infructuous.
‘No incriminating material against cops’
The court observed that after going through the entire record, it did not find any obvious and prima-facie incriminating material against the exonerated police officers.
It further said the complainants were now entitled either to make the court take cognizance against the exonerated police officers under Section 190 of the CrPC or to pursue remedy under Section 193 or 319 of the CrPC before the trial court.
The court also directed that the papers of the earlier untraced report be tagged with the supplementary report under Section 173 (8) of the CrPC, as requested by Kalyani’s defence through an application.
Case committed to trial court
Observing that the offence under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) is exclusively triable by the court of sessions judge, the court of CBI special judicial magistrate committed the case to the court of special CBI judge Jagjit Singh.
The trial court will now take up further hearings in the murder case from February 9, when Kalyani will appear before it.
She is facing charges under Sections 302 (murder), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) of the IPC.
The CBI has listed 94 persons as witnesses in the charge sheet that was filed in September last year.
