Road rage case: Supreme Court to decide fate of Navjot Singh Sidhu on Tuesday

Source – indiatimes.com

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday will deliver its verdict on appeal filed by cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu and his friend challenging their conviction and three-year jail term awarded by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in a 1988 road rage case in which one person died.

A bench of Justices J Chelameswar and Sanjay Kishan Kaul will also deliver its judgement on a cross appeal filed by the victim’s family seeking enhancement of jail term to them.

On December 27, 1988, Sidhu and Rupinder Singh Sandhu got into an argument with one Gurnam Singh over parking space near the State Bank of Patiala office in Patiala.

Sidhu and his friend had allegedly dragged Singh out of his car and dealt him a series of blows, causing his death.

When Jaswinder Singh, who was with Gurnam Singh, tried to intervene, Sandhu had also allegedly assaulted him.

A sessions court acquitted Sidhu and Sandhu in 1999, but the order was quashed by HC which in 2006 convicted them and awarded three-year jail term. The convicts thereafter approached SC which stayed their conviction.

As the Supreme Court has started final hearing in the case 11 years after the appeal was filed, Sidhu and his friend contended that the victim died of heart attack and that they could not be held guilty for it.

The Congress-led state government also opposed Sidhu’s plea for acquittal in the case and contended that there was no error in Punjab and Haryana High Court verdict convicting him in the case and awarding three-year jail term. It said said that findings of HC that Gurnam Singh did not die due to cardiac failure, but due to injury on the temporal region was correct and should be upheld by the apex court.

The HC had convicted Sidhu and his friend on the basis of medical report of the deceased.

A Board of Doctors had given its opinion attributing the cause of Gurnam Singh’s death as head injury and cardiac condition.