On Friday, Punjab Minister Brahm Shankar Jimpa announced that former cricketer and Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu will be released from Patiala jail on April 1. The Punjab government has no objection to the release, as the cabinet has approved the issue of freeing prisoners who have completed their sentences. Sidhu, currently incarcerated in Patiala jail, took to Twitter to confirm the news. His wife, Navjot Kaur Sidhu, had recently revealed her diagnosis of stage 2 cancer and subsequent surgery. She shared a heartfelt note on Twitter about her husband, who is serving a one-year sentence at Patiala Central Jail after being convicted in a road rage case.
Sidhu was sentenced to one year of imprisonment by the Supreme Court on May 19, last year, in the three-decade-old road rage case. A bench of justices AM Khanwilkar and Sanjay Kishan Kaul delivered the order. Previously, the court had reserved the review petition in the case filed by the victim’s family.
Despite Sidhu’s opposition to enlarging the scope of the road rage case against him, the court acquitted him of culpable homicide charges but convicted him of voluntarily causing hurt, imposing a fine of Rs 1,000. Sidhu’s associate, Rupinder Singh Sandhu, was also acquitted in the case.
The case has gone through multiple courts, starting with the Sessions Court Judge of Patiala acquitting Sidhu and his associate in 1999 due to lack of evidence. The Punjab and Haryana High Court later convicted and sentenced Sidhu to three years of imprisonment in 2006, prompting Sidhu to appeal before the Supreme Court.
