Weeks ahead of the Punjab Assembly elections, the Supreme Court will hear a petition seeking review of its 2018 order letting off Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu in an over 32-year-old road rage case. A special bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and Sanjay Kishan Kaul will consider the review petition.
The top had on September 12, 2018, agreed to consider a petition seeking review of its May 15, 2018 order imposing a fine of Rs 1,000 on Sidhu in the case in which a senior citizen had died in 1988.
The court had set aside the Punjab and Haryana High Court's 2006 order convicting Sidhu of culpable homicide and awarding him a three-year jail term in the case, but had held the cricketer-turned-politician guilty of causing hurt to the deceased -- a 65-year-old man.
Sidhu is presently the Punjab Congress chief and voting in the state assembly election is scheduled for February 20.
The SC had also acquitted Sidhu's aide Rupinder Singh Sandhu of all charges saying there was no trustworthy evidence regarding his presence along with Sidhu at the time of the offence in December 1988. Later in September 2018, the apex court had agreed to examine a review petition filed by the family members of the deceased and issued notice to Sidhu on it.
According to the prosecution, Sidhu and Sandhu were in a Gypsy parked in the middle of a road near the Sheranwala Gate Crossing in Patiala on December 27, 1988, when the victim and two others were on their way to the bank to withdraw money. When they reached the crossing, it was alleged, Gurnam Singh, driving a Maruti car, found the Gypsy in the middle of the road and asked the occupants, Sidhu and Sandhu, to remove it. This led to heated exchanges.
Sidhu was acquitted of the murder charges by the trial court in September 1999. However, the high court had reversed the verdict and held Sidhu and Sandhu guilty under section 304 (II) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the IPC in December 2006. It had sentenced them to three years in jail and imposed a fine of Rs one lakh each on them.
The apex court while allowing the appeals of Sidhu and Sandhu had said the medical evidence was "absolutely uncertain" regarding the cause of death of victim Gurnam Singh. In 2007, the apex court stayed the conviction of Sidhu and Sandhu in the case.
With PTI Inputs
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