Navjot Singh Sidhu faces heat in 1988 Patiala road rage case: Punjab govt asks Supreme Court to uphold his conviction

The Punjab government on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to uphold cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu’s conviction in 1988 Patiala road rage case, according to media reports. The government has taken this stand even as Sidhu is a Cabinet minister. According to CNN News18, the lawyer appearing for the Punjab government told a bench of Justices J Chelameswar and Sanjay Kishan Kaul that the statement given by the former cricketer denying his involvement in the case is false.

#BREAKING -- Punjab government seeks conviction of cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu; Punjab government asks SC to uphold Sidhu's conviction in 1988 Patiala road rage case pic.twitter.com/Ku7EsqypOV

— News18 (@CNNnews18) April 12, 2018

The government also asserted that the High Court order convicting him of culpable homicide of is perfectly valid and his punishment for three years was “according to the law”. The Supreme Court is currently hearing final arguments in the 30-year-old case. According to a report in The Hindu, Sidhu is said to have assaulted a man named Gurnam Singh over a parking dispute. The Punjab minister was initially acquitted by the Patiala sessions court in 1999. However, the Punjab and Haryana High Court convicted Sidhu and his friend Rupinder Singh Sandhu in 2006 of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and sentenced him to three years in jail,  Hindustan Times reported. The government said the trial court was wrong in its finding that Singh had died of cardiac arrest and not brain hemorrhage. “There is not a single evidence that suggest that the cause of death was cardiac arrest and not brain hemorrhage. The trial court verdict was rightly set aside by the High Court. Accused A1 (Navjot Singh Sidhu) had given fiesty blow to deceased Gurnam Singh leading to his death through brain hemorrhage,” the state government counsel told the bench. With inputs from PTI