Road rage case: SC to hear plea to enhance Navjot Sidhu’s punishment on Thursday
The Supreme Court will hear on Thursday a petition to reconsider the quantum of punishment for cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu, who was let off in 2018 with a fine of meagre ₹ 1,000 in a 1998 road rage case.
A bench of justices AM Khanwilkar and Sanjay Kishan Kaul, which issued a notice to the Punjab Congress chief in September 2018, will consider the review petition filed by the family members of a Patiala resident who lost his life in the road rage incident. Sidhu had hit a 65-year-old Gurnam Singh on the head during an argument over the parking of a car in December 1988. Sidhu said he died of cardiac arrest.
The bench issued notice to Navjot Singh Sidhu in 2018 on a petition by the victim’s family, and made it clear that it will only take it up on the limited issue of the quantum of punishment.
In May 2018, the top court set aside the Punjab and Haryana high court order convicting Sidhu of culpable homicide and awarding him a three-year jail term. It acquitted the Congress MLA of the grave charges but held him guilty of the minor offence of causing hurt under Section 323 of the Indian Penal Code.
Under Section 323, Sidhu was sentenced to a fine of ₹ 1,000. 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.
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. Therefore, even if Sidhu gets the maximum jail term under the current charge, he would not be disqualified from holding his office if he is re-elected as an MLA in the upcoming assembly poll in Punjab.
Sidhu is a sitting MLA from the Amritsar East seat and has filed his nomination papers from the same seat. Shiromani Akali Dal has fielded former Punjab minister Bikram Singh Majithia against him from this constituency.
According to the prosecution, Gurnam Singh was beaten up by Sidhu in a road rage incident in December 1998. The victim was taken to a hospital where he was declared dead.
Sidhu was acquitted by a trial court in September 1999 but this judgment was reversed by the high court in December 2006. The high court held Sidhu and co-accused RS Sandhu guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. They challenged this in the Supreme Court, which held that Sidhu was wrongly convicted of culpable homicide. In its 2018 verdict, the top court reasoned that the case was more than 30 years old and there was no past enmity between the accused and the victim.