The Sessions court in Ropar cited the Supreme Court judgment — that recently sent Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu to one-year in jail — while sentencing Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA from Patiala (rural), Dr Balbir Singh, his wife, Rupinderjit Saini, son, Rahul Saini, and one more person, Parwinder Singh, to three years of rigorous imprisonment on May 23.
The court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Ravi Inder Singh, had handed down the sentences to the AAP MLA and his family in an 11-year-old family dispute case. However, all the convicts were granted bail on the spot.
While pronouncing the judgement, the court had cited SC’s judgement in the ‘Jaswinder Singh (dead) through legal representatives vs Navjot Singh Sidhu and others’.
“An important aspect to be kept in mind is that any undue sympathy to impose inadequate sentence would do more harm to the justice system and undermine public confidence in the efficacy of law. The society cannot long endure under serious threats and if the courts do not protect the injured, the injured would then resort to private vengeance. Therefore, it is the duty of every court to award proper sentence having regard to the nature of the offence and manner in which it was executed or committed. It has, thus, been observed that the punishment to be awarded for a crime must not be irrelevant but it should conform to and be consistent with the atrocity and brutality with which the crime has been perpetrated,” the judgment read.
The court further observed, “Taking into consideration the plea of the convict and their age (convict Dr Balbir Singh, aged 66 years, convict Rupinderjit Saini, aged 60 years, convict Rahul Saini, aged 34 years, and convict Parwinder Singh alias Arminder Singh, aged 32 years) cannot lose sight of the fact that both the injured and the complainant in the present case were also aged about 68 and 60 years respectively, at the time of being mercilessly beaten up, causing grievous injury to Paramjit Saini.”
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The court ordered, “Therefore, in the considered view of this court, this is not a fit case to grant benefit of probation to the convict.”
The court further ordered that since the convict intend to prefer an appeal against the judgment, thus the sentence of the convict is suspended up to June 22, 2022, subject to furnishing a bail bond of the sum of Rs 50,000 with
one surety in the like amount each.