Supreme Court on Thursday sentenced enhanced the punishment on a plea from the victim’s family and Navjot Singh Sidhu to one year’s rigorous imprisonment in connection with the death of a 65-year-old man in a road rage of 1988.
Reacting to the judgment of the apex court, the cricketer-turned-politician said he respects the court’s judgment and would surrender to the law. “Will submit to the majesty of law…” he tweeted.
Earlier, he was seen leading a protest against inflation in Patiala. There he was seen riding an elephant and holding a banner, reading: “Elephant rise in prices.”
In 2018, Sidhu was let off with a fine of Rs 10,00. But then the family of the deceased filed a plea in the apex court to review the 2018 judgment.
A bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and S K Kaul said, “some material aspects which were required to be taken note of appearing to have been somehow missed out at the stage of sentencing, such as” the then 25-year-old cricketer’s “physical fitness”.
The bench further said there was an “error apparent on the face of the record needing some remedial action. Indulgence was not required to be shown at the stage of sentence by only imposing a sentence of fine and letting the respondent go without any imposition of sentence”.
The court further pointed out that at the time of the incident, “Sidhu was an international cricketer, who was tall and well-built and aware of the force of a blow that even his hand would carry during the altercation that led to Singh’s death in Patiala on December 27, 1988.”
“The blow was not inflicted on a person identically physically placed but a 65-year-old person, more than double his age. Sidhu cannot say that he did not know the effect of the blow or plead ignorance on this aspect. The hand can also be a weapon by itself where say a boxer, a wrestler or a cricketer or an extremely physically fit person inflicts the same”, the court said.
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