The Supreme Court on Friday granted bail to cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu in a case of a scuffle on the road that led to the death of a man in 1988. Sidhu had spent a night in the in the VIP cell of the Patiala Central Jail on Thursday. Sidhu was sentenced to three-year rigorous imprisonment by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in December 2006. A bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Justice G P Mathur, directed the former Member of Parliament of the Bharatiya Janata Party to furnish a personal bond of Rs 25,000 and a surety of the like amount before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Patiala. The Bench also issued notice to the Punjab Government on Sidhu’s petition seeking suspension of the conviction and sentence so that he could contest the by-election to the Amritsar Lok Sabha constituency, which he vacated following his conviction by the Punjab and High Court. The Supreme Court also admitted Sidhu’s appeal against the conviction and sentence, and fixed January 17, 2007, to hear his plea seeking stay of the conviction. Sidhu and his friend Rupinder Singh Sandhu were sentenced to three-year rigorous imprisonment in the road rage case that led to the death of Gurnam Singh in 1988. They were charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder. |
