Sippy murder case: Supply witnesses’ statements to Kalyani Singh, says Supreme Court

Satya Prakash

New Delhi, May 29

The Supreme Court today asked the CBI to supply the statements of witnesses to Kalyani Singh, the prime accused in the murder case of national-level shooter and lawyer Sukhmanpreet Singh Sidhu, aka Sippy Sidhu.

“Let the document be supplied by the CBI within two weeks,” a Vacation Bench of Justice JK Maheshwari and Justice KV Viswanathan said while disposing of an appeal filed by Kalyani Singh challenging an April 2024 order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court refusing the supply of certain documents to her.

The order came after advocate Zoheb Hossain submitted on behalf of the CBI that the order under challenge was passed at the stage of Section 207 of CrPC, which dealt with supplying copies of statements recorded by the police. He said the documents were not relied upon by the CBI.

Now that charges were framed, Kalyani could take recourse to Section 91 which empowered a court to issue summons to produce a particular document, Hossain said, adding that the CBI would not oppose it.

Senior counsel Siddharth Dave, representing Kalyani, said the statements of witnesses were recorded under Section 161 of the CrPC by the Chandigarh Police, but the CBI didn’t make them part of the chargesheet after the probe got transferred to it. Asserting that Kalyani had a right to access the said unrelied documents, Dave urged the Bench to direct the CBI to supply the same to the accused.

On Hossain’s request, the Bench, however, clarified that the order was passed on “peculiar facts and circumstances of the case”.

Sippy Sidhu (35) was shot dead by unknown assailants at a park in Sector 27 of Chandigarh in September 2015. The CBI had arrested Kalyani Singh, daughter of a retired Punjab and Haryana High Court Judge Justice Sabina, in the case on June 15, 2022.