Yes Sidhu, the entire nation is with you...

On December 27, 1988, Gurnam Singh was dragged out of his car and bludgeoned to death by joker turned cricketer turned Member of Parliament turned killer, Navjot Singh Sidhu and his friend Rupinder Singh Sandhu. On December 6, 2006, 18 years later, the division bench comprising of Justices Mehtab Singh Gill and Baldev Singh of the Punjab and Haryana High Court convicted Sidhu for "culpable homicide not amounting to murder". The sentence…a 3-year jail term and Rs. 90,000 (about $2000) to be paid to the widow of Gurnam Singh. Lady Justice did catch up but 18 years too late...blindfolded and without her sword. Meanwhile, these two murderers have been roaming free for 18 years (not that this is about to change anytime soon). 3 years for a murder? An engineering course takes 4!!! And Rs.90,000? (the price of a bike!) ...is that all a man's life is worth?

The Times of India (Dec 7, 2006) ... "a smile flickered for a brief moment on Sidhu's face as the judges pronounced the sentence". A smirk, if you ask me. These were his witless comments when he came out of the court to hordes of waiting supporters, "For me what is not morally correct is also not politically correct and I am happy that the entire nation is with me". This really sums it all up. Now you know how abysmally low the morals of our MPs are and what our parliament is really made up of and how these people got there.

Only a day earlier, Union minister Shibu Soren was convicted of killing his secretary and got a life sentence. A "rarest of rare" judgment in my opinion - some consolation. Ideally, he should've hung.

We the people are the ones who vote for and send these criminals to our parliament. Read again what Sidhu said, "For me what is not morally correct is also not politically correct and I am happy that the entire nation is with me". Yes, Sidhu, the entire nation shares your guilt.


... and to think that Mohammed Afzal almost did this country a favor...

Supreme Justice

On the evening of November 3, 2003, while returning from the home of a classmate, 7-year-old Raj Preet Kaur (alias Guddi) a 2nd standard student was allured to the cotton field of Amrit Singh, a farmer from Ramgarh estate in Shahpuria, Punjab (India).

31- year-old Amrit Singh raped the little girl. She died of excessive bleeding from her private parts. Her dead body was recovered from the field late that night.

He was arrested on the basis of a statement of a witness who had seen the victim in his company on the fateful evening. M.S. Chohan, Additional Sessions Judge, Mansa, sentenced Amrit Singh to death after holding him guilty of raping a minor and then murdering her. The sentence was later upheld by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

Investigators had pointed out that the little girl had resisted the 31-year-old Amrit Singh. Some black hair was found in her hand, which they felt was Singh's.

He had refused to offer his hair sample for a DNA test.

The victim's body bore the sign of extreme brutality. She was smothered and grievously assaulted by Singh. His lawyer had sought to give a twist to the case saying some other persons who were not arrested might have raped and killed her.

Amrit Singh moved the apex court challenging the conviction. On November 13, 2006, three years after the ruling of the trial court, the Supreme Court of India, commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment.

Times of India (November 13, 2006)

A Supreme Court Bench comprising Justices S B Sinha and Dalveer Bhandari also agreed with the trial court and the HC about the guilt of the accused and felt that Amrit was rightly convicted for rape.

However, it had serious doubts about fastening the murder charge on the accused. "The death occurred not as a result of strangulation but because of excessive bleeding," the Bench said quoting the doctor's report, which noted that at that age, a girl has two litres of blood in the body and as she had bled half-a-litre of blood, it was enough to cause death from shock.

"The death occurred, therefore, as a consequence of, and not because of, any specific act on the part of the accused," said Justice Sinha, writing the judgment.

It refused to classify the gruesome act as a "rarest of rare" case which had resulted in the death of a girl who was ostensibly being escorted home by the accused, her neighbor, on the evening of November 3, 2003.

Courts impose a death sentence only after being convinced that the case falls in the rarest of rare category.

The apex court imposed rigorous imprisonment for life on Amrit Singh, but when judged by the standards used in the Hetal Parekh case, the Bench may seem to have taken a lenient view of the heinous crime.

The Supreme Court Bench said: "Amrit Singh had no premeditation for commission of the offence. The offence may look heinous, but under no circumstances can it be said to be a rarest of rare case."

"Momentary lapse" as a mitigating factor may be cited by the defence attorney of a rape case accused. "The way the girl was raped may be brutal, but it could have been a momentary lapse on the part of Amrit Singh, seeing a lonely girl at a secluded place."

(The above news has been compiled from sources such as Ind Law News, The Tribune, DNA India. The latter portion was compiled from “Victim dies, rapist spared the noose” Times of India, dated November 13, 2006.)

Life imprisonment in India usually means 14 years. That means Amrit Singh would be a free man before he is 50 (maybe even 10 years earlier). Imagine if he was not rescued by the Supreme Court, he would be a dead man. What were the trial courts thinking while awarding Amrit Singh the death sentence? Can’t they empathize with a 31-year-old man who was burning with lust? All he did was give vent to his primeval urge – never mind it was on an 7-year-old girl. He did not mean to leave the little girl bleeding slowly to her death in the cotton field. As Justice Sinha noted, death occurred “not because of any specific act on the part of the accused”. At least he did not strangle her. It was, after all, just a “momentary lapse”. Don’t we all err some time or the other? As the court said, it only “looked heinous”.

To empathize with a person, one has to be of a similar bent of mind. Thank goodness our Apex court has people who can empathize with criminals like Amrit Singh!

It’s time Lady Justice took off her blindfold.