New Delhi: The hand can also be a weapon by itself where a boxer, wrestler, cricketer, or an extremely physically fit person inflicts a blow, the Supreme Court said on Thursday while imposing a sentence of one-year rigorous imprisonment on cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu in a 1988 road rage case.
The apex court said the blow inflicted, in this case, was not on a person identically physically placed but a 65-year-old man, who was more than double the age of the then cricketer at that time, and Sidhu cannot say that he did not know the effect of the blow or plead ignorance on this aspect.
The hand can also be a weapon by itself where say a boxer, a wrestler or a cricketer or an extremely physically fit person inflicts the same. This may be understood where a blow may be given either by a physically fit person or to a more aged person, a bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and S K Kaul said in its 24-page judgement.
It noted that insofar as the injury caused is concerned, the top court has accepted the plea of a single blow by hand being given on the head of the deceased.
In our view, it is this significance which is an error apparent on the face of the record needing some remedial action, the bench said while allowing the review plea filed by the complainant on the issue of the sentence awarded to Sidhu by the top court in May 2018.
Though the apex court had in May 2018 held Sidhu guilty of the offence of “voluntarily causing hurt” to a 65-year-old man, it spared him a jail term and imposed a fine of Rs 1,000.
The bench, which referred to an earlier verdict of the apex court, noted if the courts do not protect the injured, the injured would then resort to private vengeance and, therefore, it is the duty of every court to award a proper sentence having regard to the nature of the offence and the manner in which it was executed or committed.
It noted that criminal jurisprudence, with the passage of time, has laid emphasis on victimology which fundamentally is a perception of a trial from the viewpoint of the criminal as well as the victim.
No doubt there cannot be a straitjacket formula nor a solvable theory in mathematical exactitude. An offender cannot be allowed to be treated with leniency solely on the ground of discretion vested in a court, the bench said.
It also referred to the April 18 verdict by which the top court had cancelled the bail granted to Ashish Mishra, son of Union minister Ajay Mishra, in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence case and asked him to surrender in a week. —PTI

Press Trust of India