New Delhi: Weeks ahead of the Punjab Assembly elections, the Supreme Court is scheduled to re-examine on Thursday the sentence awarded by it to cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu in an over 32-year-old road rage case. Sidhu is presently the Punjab Congress President and voting in the state assembly election is scheduled for February 20.
A Bench of Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice SK Kaul—which had earlier issued notice to Sidhu “restricted to quantum of sentence”—will reconsider the amount of punishment given to him.
Sidhu and his friend Rupinder Singh Sandhu were initially tried for murder, but the trial court in September 1999 acquitted him. However, the Punjab and Haryana High Court reversed the verdict and held them guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and gave him a three-year imprisonment.
The apex court had on May 15, 2018, set aside the Punjab and Haryana High Court order convicting him of culpable homicide and awarding him a three-year jail term in the case, but had held him guilty of causing hurt to a senior citizen. Though the top court had held Sidhu guilty of the offence of “voluntarily causing hurt” to a 65-year-old man, it spared him of a jail term and imposed a fine of Rs 1,000.
