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Shibu Soren and Navjot Singh Sidhu sentenced |
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Sentences were pronounced last week on former Union Minister and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha chief, Shibu Soren, and former BJP MP from Amritsar, Navjot Singh Sidhu, who were convicted the previous week.
Shibu Soren and four others were sentenced by a Delhi court to life imprisonment in the Shashi Nath Jha murder case. The public prosecutor had pressed for the death penalty, but Additional Sessions Judge B.R. Kedia held that it was not the rarest of the rare cases in which capital punishment can be given. The judge also directed Shibu Soren to pay a fine of Rs. 5 lakhs as compensation to Shashi Nath Jha’s daughters and mother.
This is the first time when a former Union Minister and a Member of Parliament has been sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. Observers say that the life sentence handed out to the JMM leader on Tuesday, Dec. 5 stunned MPs and Ministers. There was shock and anger, but most politicians conceded that the Soren judgement was only an indication of more to come. The courts, riding on public distaste of corruption and criminalisation of politics, were bound to take a tough view of other cases involving politicians facing trial in criminal matters.
Politicians concede that public perception of their role is at its nadir. While the parliamentarians say that a majority of their colleagues are basically honest, several of them are facing criminal cases of various types. With the change in public perception, the ability of the politicians to manoeuvre court verdicts in their favour has come down and their vulnerability in the judicial system has gone up.
The JMM called a bandh in Jharkhand, West Bengal and Orissa on Thursday, Dec. 7 against the life sentence on its chief, Shibu Soren, but decided to convert the bandh into a Mahadharna after the Jharkhand High court declared the bandh illegal and unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, reports say that Shibu Soren is trying to install his wife Rupi as the chairperson of the UPA steering panel in Jharkhand in his place. But there are murmurs within the JMM against the move. The JMM has rejected the demand for Shibu Soren’s resignation from the Lok Sabha in the wake of his conviction and sentencing in a murder case.
Three year jail term for Sidhu
On the other side of the political spectrum, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has sentenced the former BJP MP from Amritsar, Navjot Singh Sidhu to three years rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs. 1 lakh for causing the death of a 65-year Patiala resident, Gurnam Singh after a scuffle over parking of vehicles. But the court suspended the sentence till Jan. 31 2007 to enable Sidhu and another person, Rupinder Singh Sandhu, convicted in the case to file appeals against their sentence in the Supreme Court. On December 1, a Division Bench of the High Court had held Sidhu and Sandhu guilty u/s 304, Part II, of the Indian Penal Code for committing culpable homicide, not amounting to murder.
The BJP says that Navjot Singh Sidhu will be its star campaigner in the Assembly elections in Punjab due early next year.
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