New Delhi, February 02:
The Supreme Court will hear on Thursday a petition to reconsider the quantum of punishment for cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu, who was let off in 2018 with a fine of meagre ₹ 1,000 in a 1998 road rage case.
Under Section 323, Sidhu was sentenced to a fine of ₹ 1,000. The maximum punishment under Section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the IPC is a jail term of one year or a fine of ₹1,000.
The outcome of the review petition, however, is unlikely to impact Sidhu’s political career because, under the Representation of the People Act, it is only a jail term of two years or more that can lead to disqualification of a sitting MP or an MLA. Therefore, even if Sidhu gets the maximum jail term under the current charge, he would not be disqualified from holding his office if he is re-elected as an MLA in the upcoming assembly poll in Punjab.
Sidhu is a sitting MLA from the Amritsar East seat and has filed his nomination papers from the same seat. Shiromani Akali Dal has fielded former Punjab minister Bikram Singh Majithia against him from this constituency.
According to the prosecution, Gurnam Singh was beaten up by Sidhu in a road rage incident in December 1998. The victim was taken to a hospital where he was declared dead.
Sidhu was acquitted by a trial court in September 1999 but this judgment was reversed by the high court in December 2006. The high court held Sidhu and co-accused RS Sandhu guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. They challenged this in the Supreme Court, which held that Sidhu was wrongly convicted of culpable homicide. In its 2018 verdict, the top court reasoned that the case was more than 30 years old and there was no past enmity between the accused and the victim.
