The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered a key verdict in the 1988 road rage case involving Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu, sentencing him to one year of rigorous imprisonment. While announcing the sentence, the court said that a “hand is a weapon” when it comes to a cricketer.
While hearing the plea filed by the family of the deceased victim, the apex court said that 'hand can also be a weapon when a cricketer or extremely physically fit person inflicts the same'. The bench further remarked that a disproportionately light punishment humiliates and frustrates a victim of crime when the offender goes unpunished or is let off with a relatively minor punishment.
The apex court bench, comprising of Justices AM Khanwilkar and Sanjay Kishan Kaul, sentenced Sidhu to jail in the 34-year-old road rage case, in which an elderly person lost his life after being struck by the Congress leader on his head, according to reports.
While delivering the verdict, the court said, “The hand can also be a weapon by itself where say a boxer, a wrestler or a cricketer or an extremely physically fit person inflicts the same. This may be understood where a blow may be given either by a physically fit person or to a more aged person.”
“Insofar as the injury caused is concerned, this Court has accepted the plea of a single blow by hand being given on the head of the deceased. In our view, it is this significance which is an error apparent on the face of the record needing some remedial action,” the apex court further added, as per PTI reports.
The court further observed that the blow was not inflicted on a person identically physically placed but on a 65-year-old person, more than double his age and Sidhu cannot say that he did not know the effect of the blow or plead ignorance on this aspect.
(With PTI inputs)
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