According to Additional Solicitor General of India Satyapal Jain, Sidhu is left with no other option but to surrender before police. If Sidhu does not surrender, police will have to arrest him, officials said. He will then be put in Patiala jail, they said.Sidhu, a former chief of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee who was at loggerheads with former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh ahead of the Assembly polls in Punjab early this year, has the option of filing a curative petition– the last judicial corrective measure which can be pleaded for in any judgment or decision.
According to the prosecution, Sidhu and his aide Rupinder Singh 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 a bank to withdraw money.
When they reached the crossing, it was alleged that 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 and Gurnam was beaten up in the scuffle and later taken to hospital where he was declared dead, the prosecution said.
Sidhu was acquitted of murder charges by a trial court in September 1999.
However, the Punjab and Haryana High Court in December 2006 reversed the verdict and held Sidhu and Sandhu guilty under section 304 (II) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the IPC. It had sentenced them to three years in jail and imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh each on them.
The apex court on May 15, 2018, set aside the high court order but had held Sidhu guilty of causing hurt to a senior citizen. This verdict had come on the appeal filed by Sidhu and Sandhu challenging the high court’s conviction.
The top court had also acquitted Sandhu of all charges saying there was no trustworthy evidence regarding his presence along with Sidhu at the time of the offence.
In September 2018, the apex court had agreed to examine the review petition filed by the family members of the deceased and had issued notice, restricted to the quantum of sentence.
The bench on Thursday noted that the top court, to some extent, had been indulgent in ultimately holding him guilty of offence of simple hurt under section 323 of the IPC and the question is whether even on sentence, mere passage of time can result in a fine of Rs 1,000 being an adequate sentence where a person has lost his life by reason of the severity of blow inflicted by Sidhu, who was 25-year-old at that time, with his hands.
Section 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt) of IPC entails a maximum jail term of up to one year or with a fine which may extend to Rs 1,000 or both.
“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. This may be understood where a blow may be given either by a physically fit person or to a more aged person,” the bench said.
