Navjot Singh Sidhu's own govt opposes acquittal in road rage case

NEW DELHI: Cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu may have joined Congress and become a cabinet minister in Punjab but the stand of the state government remained unchanged on his alleged involvement a 1988 road rage case resulting in the death of a person.
The state government on Thursday opposed his plea for acquittal in the case and told a bench of Justices J Chelameswar and Sanjay Kishan Kaul in the Supreme Court that there was no error in the Punjab and Haryana high court verdict convicting him in the case and awarding a three-year jail term.

Interestingly, present chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh was also at the helm in 2006 when the state government took a stand against Sidhu in the HC which convicted him. Sidhu at that time was member of BJP. Twelve years down the line, Singh has come back to power and Sidhu has changed his political affiliation and joined Congress. The state government, having taken a stand in the HC seeking Sidhu's conviction, found it difficult to change its stand in the Supreme Court.

Continuing with the stand taken before the HC, advocate Sangram Singh Saron, appearing for the state, told the bench that eyewitness account and medical evidence proved the former cricketer's guilt in the case beyond doubt and pleaded the court not to interfere with the HC verdict.

On Dec 27, 1988, Sidhu and Rupinder Singh Sandhu got into an argument with one Gurnam Singh over parking space at 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 assaulted him.

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

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

Opposing the appeal of the former cricketer, the state government's advocate Saron contended that findings of the HC that Gurnam Singh did not die of cardiac arrest, but due to injury on the temporal region was correct and should be upheld by the apex court.

The complainant and family member of the deceased also approached the SC for enhancement of punishment and told the bench that Gurnam Singh died of head injury caused by Sidhu and his fried. They contended that the head injury could not have been inflicted by mistake and just because the victim died later does not change the nature of the offence.

The HC had convicted Sidhu and his friend on the basis of medical report of the deceased. A medical board had given its opinion attributing the death of Gurnam Singh to head injury and his cardiac condition. In the opinion of one of the doctors, who was a prosecution witness, subdural haemorrhage was present over the left parietal region and brain, and this haemorrhage, and not cardiac arrest, caused his death. The board had stated that the head injury itself could be sufficient cause of death.