By PTI
PATIALA: Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu surrendered before a court here on Friday, a day after being sentenced to one-year rigorous imprisonment by the Supreme Court in a 1988 road-rage death case.
“He has surrendered before the court,” Sidhu’s media advisor Surinder Dalla told reporters outside the court. Officials said Sidhu was taken for a medical examination and he will be lodged in a jail here.
Accompanied by some party leaders including Navtej Singh Cheema, the 58-year-old Sidhu reached the district court, which is closed to his house, in the afternoon.
Cheema drove Sidhu, who was in a dark-coloured ‘pathani suit’, to the court in an SUV. This comes just hours after the former Punjab Congress president approached the Supreme Court seeking a few week to surrender to serve the imprisonment.
The top court bench of justices A M Khanwilkar and J B Pardiwala told senior advocate A M Singhvi, appearing for Sidhu, that the judgment was passed by a special bench, and that he can file the application and mention it before the Chief Justice.
Singhvi said he will try and mention the matter before the Chief Justice. Back in Patiala, some supporters of Sidhu had turned up at his residence Friday morning. Patiala District Congress Committee president Narinder Pal Lali, in a message to party supporters Thursday night, had said Sidhu would reach the court at 10 am.
He had urged them to arrive at the court complex around 9.30 am. The cricketer-turned politician’s wife Navjot Kaur Sidhu had reached their Patiala residence on Thursday night.
The SC had Thursday sentenced Sidhu to one-year rigorous imprisonment, saying any undue sympathy in imposing an inadequate sentence would do more harm to the justice system and undermine the public confidence in the efficacy of law.
The 65-year-old Gurnam Singh had died in the road rage incident. When reporters sought Sidhu’s reaction to the verdict on Thursday, he had declined to comment. However, he subsequently tweeted to say he “will submit to the majesty of the law”.
Though the apex court had in May 2018 held Sidhu guilty of the offence of “voluntarily causing hurt” to the man, it had spared him a jail term and imposed a fine of Rs 1,000. The one-year rigorous imprisonment was imposed on Thursday as a bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and S K Kaul allowed a review plea filed by Gurnam Singh’s family.
“We feel there is an error apparent on the face of record…Therefore, we have allowed the review application on the issue of the sentence. In addition to the fine imposed, we consider it appropriate to impose a sentence of imprisonment for a period of one year,” the bench said while pronouncing the verdict.
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