Judges JK Maheshwari and KV Viswanathan’s Vacation Bench heard an appeal from Kalyani Singh, who had challenged a Punjab and Haryana High Court ruling from April 2024 that had denied her access to specific papers.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court requested that the CBI provide witness statements to Kalyani Singh, the primary culprit in the murder case of lawyer Sippy Sidhu and national-level shooter.
A Vacation Bench comprising Justice JK Maheshwari and Justice KV Viswanathan ordered the CBI to “provide the document within two weeks” in response to an appeal filed by Kalyani Singh against an April 2024 Punjab and Haryana High Court ruling that had denied her access to specific papers.
The ruling was issued in response to a submission made by counsel Zoheb Hossain on behalf of the CBI, arguing that the order in question was issued under Section 207 CrPC (the magistrate is under an imperative duty to furnish to the accused, free of cost, copies of statements made to the police and of others to be relied upon by the prosecution) which addresses the provision of copies of police-recorded statements. He said that the CBI had not depended on the documents.
Hossain stated that now that charges have been brought, Kalyani may use Section 91, which gives a court the authority to issue a summons for the production of a specific document, and that the CBI would not object.
Senior attorney Siddharth Dave, who is representing Kalyani, stated that although Chandigarh Police had recorded witness testimonies under Section 161 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the CBI had not included them in the charge sheet following the transfer of the investigation to the central agency. Dave petitioned the Bench to order the CBI to provide the accused with the aforementioned unreeled documents, stating that Kalyani had a right to see them.
However, the Bench stated at Hossain’s request that the order was made due to the “peculiar facts and circumstances of the case.”
On June 15, 2022, the CBI detained Kalyani Singh, the daughter of retired Punjab and Haryana High Court judge Justice Sabina, on suspicion of killing Sippy Sidhu at a Sector 27 park on the evening of September 20, 2015. It was rumored that Sidhu had rejected Kalyani’s proposal of marriage. On the day of the murder, the CBI claimed that Kalyani was observed chatting to Sippy Sidhu before killing him with an unidentified individual brandishing a gun. The Punjab and Haryana High Court granted her bail in the case in September 2022.
Kalyani is already facing murder charges from a CBI court, and the trial is scheduled to start shortly.
