Indian cricketerturned-lawmaker gets jail in 1988 road rage case
India’s top court ordered yesterday a one-year jail term for cricketer-turnedlawmaker Navjot Singh Sidhu for a road-rage assault case that killed a man over 30 years ago.
Sidhu, who until recently served as the head of the main opposition Congress party in the state of Punjab, was accused by an eyewitness of pulling the deceased out of his car and killing him with a blow to the head in December 1988.
The Supreme Court in 2018 ordered the former state lawmaker to pay a fine of 1000 rupees ($12.91) for voluntarily hurting a person.
However, in a ruling on Thursday following a review of its 2018 judgment, the court said it considered it “appropriate” to jail Sidhu in addition to fining him, saying “some aggravated culpability” must be attached if a person dies.
“In addition to the fine imposed, we consider it appropriate to impose a sentence of imprisonment for a period of one year rigorous imprisonment,” the ruling said. After the judgment, Sidhu said in a tweet he would “submit to the majesty of law,” without elaborating. The former international cricketer in the northern state of Punjab was acquitted by a local court in 1999, citing lack of evidence, but subsequently convicted of culpable homicide by a High Court in 2006 and sentenced to three years in jail.