The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a review plea in an years-old case involving Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu. The plea was filed by relatives of the victim of the incident who died 32 years ago. The plea contends that Sidhu was charged for a much lesser offence of voluntarily causing hurt, and that the court should expand the ambit to consider punishing Sidhu for culpable homicide.

Agreeing to hear the petition, the apex court asked Sidhu to file his response within two weeks. The apex court was hearing a matter pertaining to the review of sentence awarded by it in May 2018 to the cricketer-turned-politician in the 1988 road rage case.

The top court had held Sidhu guilty of the offence of voluntarily causing hurt to a 65-year-old man. However, the court had spared him a jail term while imposing a fine of Rs 1,000. Section 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt) of the Indian Penal Code entails a maximum jail term of up to one year or with a fine which may extend to Rs 1,000 or both.

Appearing for the petitioner, senior advocate Siddharth Luthra referred to an earlier judgement of the apex court and contended that there was a clear determination that a person who causes death cannot and ought not to be punished for an offence in the category of hurt.

Senior advocate P Chidambaram, appearing for Sidhu, said that notice issued by the court on the review petition was restricted to quantum of sentence only. He argued that the scope should not be enlarged at this stage as the apex court had in its May 2018 judgement concluded that the case fell under Section 323 of the IPC.

However, the bench observed that the whole matter is not required to be heard again but it will have to deal with the application filed by the petitioner seeking enlargement of the scope of punishment.

The apex court had on May 15, 2018, set aside the Punjab and Haryana High Court order convicting Sidhu of culpable homicide and awarding him a three-year jail term in the case, but had held him guilty of causing hurt to a senior citizen. The top court had also acquitted Sidhu’s aide Rupinder Singh Sandhu of all charges, saying there was no trustworthy evidence regarding his presence along with Sidhu at the time of the offence in December 1988. Later in September 2018, the apex court had agreed to examine a review petition filed by the family members of the deceased.

The apex court’s May 2018 verdict had come on the appeal filed by Sidhu and Sandhu challenging the high court’s 2006 judgment convicting them.

According to the prosecution, Sidhu and Sandhu were in a Gypsy parked in the middle of a road near the Sheranwala Gate Crossing in Patiala on December 27, 1988, when the victim and two others were on their way to the bank to withdraw money. When they reached the crossing, it was alleged, Gurnam Singh, driving a Maruti car, found the Gypsy in the middle of the road and asked the occupants, Sidhu and Sandhu, to remove it. This led to heated exchanges.

Sidhu was acquitted of murder charges by the trial court in September 1999. However, the high court had reversed the verdict and held Sidhu and Sandhu guilty under section 304 (II) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the IPC in December 2006. It had sentenced them to three years in jail and imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh each on them.

(With PTI inputs)