Punjab govt supports Sidhu’s conviction

NEW DELHI : The Punjab government on Thursday opposed its tourism minister Navjot Singh Sidhu’s plea to overturn his conviction in the 1998 road rage case in which a man had died, allegedly after being beaten up by the cricketer-turned politician and his friend Rupinder Singh Sandhu.

State counsel Sangram Singh Saron told a bench of justices J Chelameswar and Sanjay Kishan Kaul that the trial court’s verdict was unreasonable and was rightly reversed by the Punjab and Haryana high court.

Saron read out the statements of prosecution witnesses in support of the police case. “Two eyewitnesses have fully supported the prosecution case,” the lawyer said. However, the counsel did not toe the line of the complainant who wants Sidhu and Sandhu to be convicted for murder.

Saron said the testimony of investigating officer also established the police theory that the victim was dragged and his turban came off, following which the accused landed blows on his temple that led to a hemorrhage.

As the case has generated considerable interest in the government and political circles in Punjab, a government spokesperson said the state counsel took the legally correct stand.

“The state prosecution had taken a position in the Punjab & Haryana high court, which had, in 2006, convicted the minister in a 1998 road rage case. How could the state government now back out of the same? It followed the rule of the law in the Supreme Court,” said the spokesperson.

He said the CM had always maintained that his government would strictly uphold the law and would not interfere in judicial matters. “In fact, the minister himself did not, at any stage, try to use his political clout to influence the prosecution in any manner,” he clarified.

Police chargesheet claims that Sidhu and his friend Rupinder Singh Sandhu were allegedly present in a Gypsy parked near Sheranwala Gate Crossing on December 27, 1988, while Gurnam Singh (the deceased) was on his way to a bank in a Maruti car with two others. As Gurnam asked the Gypsy occupants to give them way, he was beaten up by the accused who fled the scene. Gurnam was taken to a hospital where he was declared dead.

Sidhu and Sandhu were initially tried for murder but the trial court in September 1999 acquitted them.

However, the HC reversed the finding and declared them guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and sentenced him to three years of jail.