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Supreme Court to hear review petition in 1988 road rage case against Sidhu
This comes just weeks before Punjab is set to hold Assembly elections; the cricketer-turned-politician is contesting from Amritsar East constituency.
The Supreme Court will on Thursday take up a petition to reconsider the quantum of punishment awarded to Congress Punjab unit chief Navjot Singh Sidhu in a 1988 road rage case, in which a senior citizen lost his life. Sidhu was let off in 2018 with a fine of meagre ₹1,000 in the case.
This comes just weeks before Punjab is set to hold Assembly elections; the cricketer-turned-politician is contesting from Amritsar East constituency.
A special bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and Sanjay Kishan Kaul are likely to consider the review petition.
The case pertains to a road rage incident in 1988 involving Sidhu. According to a report by ANI, Sidhu and his aide Rupinder Singh Sandhu were in a Gypsy parked in the middle of a road near the Sheranwala Gate Crossing in Patiala on December 27, 1988, while a 65-year-old Gurnam Singh along with two others were on their way to the bank. It is alleged that the victim asked the two men to remove their car from the crossing, which led to an altercation between them. Reports say that Gurnam Singh died in the incident after being beaten up by Sidhu. The Congress leader, however, claims that Singh died of a cardiac arrest.
Initially charged as murder, the trial court acquitted Sidhu. Subsequently, the case reached the Punjab and Haryana high court, which reversed the verdict and held the duo guilty of culpable homicide and awarded three-year imprisonment.
The Supreme Court on May 15, 2018, set aside the high court order, but held Sidhu guilty of the minor offence of causing hurt to a 65-year-old man under Section 323 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The maximum punishment under Section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the IPC is a jail term of one year or a fine of ₹1,000, which he was asked to pay. Sandhu, meanwhile, was acquitted of all charges on grounds of lack of "trustworthy evidence regarding his presence."
The apex court had said the medical evidence was "absolutely uncertain" regarding the cause of death of victim Gurnam Singh.
Later that year, the man's family approached the court and filed a petition urging the court to review its verdict, which it agreed to hear.
The apex court's May 2018 verdict had come on the appeal filed by Sidhu and Sandhu challenging the high court's 2006 judgment convicting them.
The outcome of the review petition, however, is unlikely to impact Sidhu’s political career because, under the Representation of the People Act, it is only a jail term of two years or more that can lead to disqualification of a sitting MP or an MLA.
