SC acquits Navjot Singh Sidhu in 1988 road rage case

New Delhi: In a big relief to former cricketer and Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, the Supreme Court on Tuesday acquitted him in a road rage case of homicide not amounting to murder of a 65-year-old man in 1988.

A bench of Justices J. Chelameswar and Sanjay Kishan Kaul set aside the Punjab and Haryana High Court judgement awarding three years’ imprisonment to Sidhu treating it as “culpable homicide not amounting to murder”.

Mr Sidhu had allegedly hit a 65-year-old man, Gurnam Singh, on the head during an argument on a road in Patiala on December 27, 1988. Gurnam Singh died in hospital from a haemorrhage. In 2007, the Supreme Court suspended Mr Sidhu’s sentence and granted him bail after he appealed against his conviction by the Punjab and Hary-ana HC. The suspended sentence enabled him to contest the Lok Sabha bypolls from Amritsar.

Writing the judgement, Justice Chelameswar said the evidence on record indicated that the assault of Sidhu resulted in a very minor abrasion over the left temporal region. The material on record leads us to the only possible conclusion that Sidhu voluntarily caused hurt to Gurnam Singh punishable under IPC Section 323 and this was not the reason for the death.