Navjot Singh Sidhu moves Supreme Court seeking additional time to surrender in road rage case

Congress leader and former Indian cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu has approached the Supreme Court seeking additional time to surrender after he was sentenced to one year in jail by the top court in a 1988 road rage case [Jaswinder Singh (Dead) through Legal Representative v. Navjot Singh Sidhu and Others]..The matter was mentioned on Friday morning by Senior Counsel Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi before Justice AM Khanwilkar who had headed the bench which delivered the verdict against Sidhu in review petition. "He will surrender. But he wants a few weeks to settle up his medical health issues. Give some time please," Singhvi submitted. The Court asked Sidhu to file a formal application to that effect. "Place a formal application and we will see. File this and mention it before the Chief Justice's court, then we will see," the bench remarked. .A bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and Sanjay Kishan Kaul had on Thursday allowed the review petition challenging the Supreme Court's 2018 judgment that had reduced the punishment imposed on Sidhu in the road rage case from 3 years imprisonment to ₹1,000 fine.The review was filed by the son of the victim who had allegedly died after a physical assault by Sidhu and others..The case of the prosecution was that in December 1988, the victim and the appellants including Sidhu got into a heated exchange over a vehicle belonging to the appellants which was allegedly parked in the middle of the road.This exchange, according to the prosecution, led to a physical assault on the victim, who was pronounced dead when he was taken to the hospital. It was claimed by the prosecution that Sidhu had fled the scene of the crime.The trial court had acquitted the appellants in 1999 on the grounds that the death of the victim was caused due to cardiac arrest and not due to the injuries sustained in the assault. This acquittal, however, was set aside by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2006, which found the appellants guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.The High Court awarded Sidhu and another accused three years’ imprisonment and a fine of ₹1 lakh each.In 2007, the Supreme Court had stayed Sidhu’s conviction and granted him bail.In May 2018, the Supreme Court let off Sidhu with a fine of Rs. 1000, for the offence of voluntarily causing hurt under Section 323 of IPC.That judgment was delivered by a Division Bench of Justices Jasti Chelameswar and Sanjay Kishan Kaul.This led to the review petition which was allowed yesterday.