Supreme Court acquits Navjot Singh Sidhu in 1988 road rage case
In 2007, the Supreme Court suspended Mr Sidhu's sentence and granted him bail.
New Delhi: In a huge 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 S.K. Kaul set aside the Punjab and Haryana High Court judgment awarding him three years imprisonment treating it as ‘culpable homicide not amounting to murder’.
Mr Sidhu had allegedly hit Gurnam Singh on the head during an argument on a road in Patiala on December 27, 1988. Singh died in hospital of a haemorrhage. In 2007, the Supreme Court suspended Mr Sidhu’s sentence and granted him bail.
Writing the judgment, Justice Chelameswar said the evidence on record indicated that the assault of Mr Sidhu resulted in very minor abrasion over the left temporal region. “The material on record leads us to the only possible conclusion that Mr Sidhu voluntarily caused hurt to Gurnam Singh punishable under IPC Section 323 and this was not the reason for the death. The court said it is very difficult to conclude that the victim died not because of heart attack but only because of haemorrhage, and acquitted him giving the benefit of doubt and slapping a fine of Rs 1000 for voluntarily causing hurt.