Former Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu surrendered to a Patiala court on Friday after the Supreme Court sentenced him to a year in prison in a 1988 road rage case.
Sidhu arrived at the district court, which is close to his home, escorted by some party leaders, including Navtej Singh Cheema, according to the news agency PTI. Cheema drove Sidhu to the court in an SUV. A handful of his followers had also arrived at his Patiala residence on Friday morning, while his wife Navjot Kaur Sidhu had arrived on Thursday night.
Navjot Singh Sidhu sentenced in road rage case
On Thursday (May 19), the Supreme Court convicted former India cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu to one year in prison in an old assault case dating back to 1988. On December 27, 1988, the then-cricketer allegedly hit a man named Gurnam Singh on the head, killing him. Meanwhile, a bench of judges AM Khanwilkar and SK Kaul rejected the motion to prosecute Sidhu with murder under Section 304A of the IPC.
In 2018, Sidhu was found guilty of voluntarily injuring another person. However, he was acquitted of the culpable homicide charges. The court subsequently imposed an INR 1000 fine on Sidhu.
The Sessions Court Judge of Patiala acquitted the now-politician-turned-cricketer in September 1999 due to a lack of evidence in the case, and the benefit of the doubt was granted to Sidhu.
The victim’s family subsequently appealed the verdict to the Punjab and Haryana High Court, where Navjot Singh Sidhu was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison in 2006. Sidhu subsequently appealed the verdict to the Supreme Court, which reduced his sentence to one year.
After making his international debut in 1983, Sidhu played for India for up to 16 years. He appeared in 51 Tests and 136 One-Day Internationals, accumulating 3202 and 4413 runs in the two formats, respectively.
In his international career, he scored 15 centuries and 48 half-centuries. Sidhu, now 58, played 157 first-class and 205 List-A games in his career, scoring 16657 runs and hitting 37 tonnes and 105 fifties.
