Sippy Sidhu murder: Judge recuses from hearing case after objections by CBI, Sippy Sidhu’s lawyer

The CBI had arrested Kalyani on June 15 after several rounds of questioning regarding Sippy Sidhu’s murder.

On Monday, as the matter came up for hearing , Advocate Sartej Narula, who is representing the accused, produced an affidavit of Parminder Singh — father of Kalyani Singh — which stated that he has no objection to the case being heard by the court of Justice Chitkara.

However, counsel for the CBI, after taking instructions from Navdeep Singh Brar, Superintendent of Police, CBI, as well as counsel for Sippy Sidhu, Senior Advocate RS Bains, submitted that they had objections to the matter being heard by the court of Justice Chitkara.

Given the objections, Justice Anoop Chitkara said, “Let the matter be listed before some other Bench after obtaining appropriate order from the Chief Justice.”

During the previous hearing, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had asked “the petitioner, complainant and CBI, through appropriate person(s), to file respective affidavits of objection/no objection.”

Kalyani Singh, who is currently lodged at Model Burail Jail, Chandigarh, had filed for bail before the HC after a similar plea was junked by the CBI court of Chandigarh.

Kalyani’s counsel has contended in the bail plea at HC that the CBI Special Judge, who rejected her bail plea, failed to appreciate the fact that the investigating agency had not been able to bring up, or point out any new evidence that would indict the petitioner “beyond whatever evidence that was available with them at the time of filing report under Section 173 of the CrPC on December 7, 2020”.

It was added in the petition that the court had conveniently ignored the fact that the petitioner had in all these years never tried to influence the witnesses or tamper with the evidence.