Navjot Singh Sidhu has questioned the basis of the High Court sentencing him to three years in jail
Fighting back the Punjab government which had supported his conviction, Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that the verdict sentencing him to three years in a road rage case was flawed and not based on medical evidence.
Mr Sidhu had allegedly hit a 65-year-old man, Gurnam Singh, on the head during an argument on a road in Patiala on 27 December 1988. Gurnam Singh died in hospital. A key point of Mr Sidhu's defence has been to question the conclusion that the death took place due to the assault.
The trial court had cleared Mr Sidhu of the charge in 1999 but the Punjab and Haryana high court sentenced him to three years in jail in December 2006. The Supreme Court had suspended the sentence the next year.
Last week, the Punjab government had stunned Mr Sidhu when it backed his conviction and contradicted his contention that Gurnam Singh had died of a cardiac arrest.
Mr Sidhu, 54, had quit the BJP after representing Amritsar in Lok Sabha for two terms when the party ticket to contest from the city was given to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in 2014. He had later joined the Congress, a party that he had run down during the years he was in the BJP, was once seen to be angling for the Deputy Chief Minister's post.
Mr Singh was appointed minister Punjab's tourism and local government minister. But that position did not help change the government's stance in the Supreme Court,
Chief Minister Amarinder Singh later told reporters that his government could not, after having taking the line that he was guilty before two other courts, contradict itself before the top court.
Mr Sidhu also told the Supreme Court bench of Justices J Chelameswar and SK Kaul that the three prosecution witnesses had spoken in "different language" before the trial court. Besides, only two of the six members of the medical board had not been examined as witnesses in the case.
"The findings (of the high court) were based on opinion and not on medical evidence. There was no rationale for this kind of an opinion," senior lawyer RS Cheema, appearing for Mr Sidhu, told the top court.
The former cricketer argued there was "ambiguity" regarding the actual cause of death of Patiala resident Gurnam Singh, who had died after he was allegedly given a fist blow by Mr Sidhu.
Two doctors, who were part of the board, were examined as witnesses in the case but the prosecution had not placed on record any material to show that there were deliberations among these experts regarding the cause of death. "The deficiency in the medical evidence was writ large," he said during the arguments which would continue tomorrow, according to news agency Press Trust of India.