Sippy Murder Case: Kalyani Singh provided with statements of 53 witnesses

Ramkrishan Upadhyay

Chandigarh, June 7

Following the direction of the Supreme Court, the CBI has provided the statements of 53 witnesses to Kalyani Singh, the accused in the murder case of 35-year-old national-level shooter and advocate Sukhmanpreet Singh Sidhu, aka Sippy Sidhu.

Kalyani had approached the Supreme Court after her plea for providing statements was rejected by the special CBI court, and then by the Punjab and Haryana High Court. In her application, Kalyani sought the statements of the witnesses recorded by the Chandigarh Police under Section 161 of the CrPC, prior to remittance of investigation to the CBI.

Sippy Sidhu was shot dead at a park in Sector 27 on September 20, 2015. The case was first investigated by the UT police and later transferred to the CBI.

After six years of investigation, the CBI also failed to find the culprits in the case and filed an untraced report in December 2020 with the request to allow further investigation. However, the court did not accept the untraced report and asked the CBI to further investigate the case.

On June 15, 2022, the CBI had arrested Kalyani in the case. The agency claimed in the chargesheet that Kalyani was seen talking to Sippy Sidhu in the park and thereafter killing him along with an unknown person with firearms on the day of the incident.

The CBI court had already framed murder charges against Kalyani Singh in the case. While the CBI submitted a list of 86 witnesses in the chargesheet, the Chandigarh Police examined 53 witnesses and recorded their statements. The name of the main witness of the CBI, who claimed to be eyewitness of the crime scene, is not there in the statements of the witnesses given to Kalyani by the probe agency. The prosecution claimed that the eyewitness had led the CBI to the spot and explained the sequence of the events and identified the scene of crime.