Jail Navjot Sidhu, Punjab's Cong govt tells SC

NEW DELHI: Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu should serve three years in jail as ordered by a court, his own government said on Thursday, urging the Supreme Court to confirm his conviction in a road rage case of 1988.

Sidhu had allegedly hit a 65-year-old man, Gurnam Singh, on the head during an argument on the road in Patiala on December 27, 1988. Gurnam Singh died in hospital of a haemorrhage.

In 2007, the Supreme Court suspended Sidhu's sentence and granted him bail after he appealed his conviction by the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The suspended sentence enabled him to contest the Lok Sabha bypolls from Amritsar.

"There is no evidence that the person in the road rage died because of a heart attack," said the Congress government, contradicting its own minister. Sidhu, 54, had argued in court that Gurnam Singh died of a heart attack.