New Delhi, February 25
The Supreme Court on Friday asked Punjab Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu to respond to a plea to enlarge the scope of a petition seeking review of its verdict letting him off in a more than 33-year-old road rage case with a Rs 1,000 fine.
A Bench of Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice SK Kaul asked Sidhu to respond to the victim’s family’s plea to treat his offence as more serious than just causing hurt and accordingly enhance his punishment.
The Bench—which had earlier deferred the hearing in view of the assembly polls to February 2—posted the matter for further hearing after two weeks.
Senior advocate P Chidambaram, representing Sidhu, opposed the court’s decision to enlarge the scope of the review plea even as on behalf of the review petitioner, senior advocate Siddharth Luthra urged the Bench to consider reviving the cricketer-turned politician’s conviction on homicide charges.
The petitioner has sought a review of the Supreme Court’s 2018 order letting off Sidhu with a fine of Rs 1,000 in the 1988 road rage case in which one Gurnam Singh had died. Sidhu was acquitted of homicide charges on May 15, 2018, by the top court but convicted of voluntarily causing hurt to the deceased and ordered to pay a fine of Rs 1,000.
Responding to the court’s earlier notice, Sidhu cited his “impeccable political and sporting career in the last three decades” to urge the top court not to enhance his punishment.
The Supreme Court had on September 12, 2018, agreed to consider a petition seeking review of its May 15, 2018, order. While issuing notice to Sidhu “restricted to quantum of sentence”, it had agreed to reconsider the punishment given to him. However, on Friday, it sought his response on the plea to revive his conviction on homicide charge as well.
Sidhu was 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 sentence. But the top court in its May 15, 2018 verdict let him off by asking him to pay a Rs 1,000 fine.
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