Former India cricketer sentenced to prison

In a decades-old road rage case, India’s top court sentenced cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu to one year in prison.

Supreme Court decided in 1988 that Sidhu “deliberately inflicted harm” to Gurnam Singh, who died as a result of the incident.

In 2018, the former MP was acquitted of the more serious allegation of manslaughter, which stands today.

However, his political career has been severely harmed by his imprisonment.

After his party was wiped out in state legislature elections, Sidhu resigned as the Congress party’s chief in Punjab.

He has few legal alternatives remaining because he can only challenge the verdict once through a curative petition.

Timeline of the case

In 1988, Sidhu was charged with manslaughter when a 65-year-old man died in Patiala after an argument with him.

He was India’s opening batsman at the time, and his international cricket career was only getting started.

The trial court continued to hear the case. Sidhu was acquitted by the court in 1999.

The state took his case to the top court, which found him guilty of manslaughter in 2006.

This caused him to quit his Amritsar parliamentary seat, as Indian law prohibits convicted individuals from holding public office.

He took his case to the Supreme Court, which overturned the conviction and allowed him to reclaim his position in a by-election.

In 2018, the Supreme Court declared him not guilty of manslaughter but guilty of “hurting the victim” and ordered him to pay a fine of 1,000 rupees ($13; £10).

The victim’s relatives filed an appeal, and the Supreme Court added a one-year sentence to the fine on Thursday.