It's official. The BJP-Akali Dal combine has no qualms making an election mascot of a man who has killed someone in a fit of road rage. Cricketer-comedian Navjot Singh Sidhu was held guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder on December 1. The Punjab and Haryana high court sentenced him to three years rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1 lakh for the offence he committed 18 years ago. With much ado and much verbiage, he resigned his Lok Sabha seat from Amritsar, but lost no time in setting his sights on the Patiala assembly constituency where he is keen to take on Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh on the latter's own home turf.

Only time and the Election Commission will tell whether Sidhu can do so. Much will depend on his appeal in the Supreme Court. If it stays the conviction and the EC raises no objections, then Sidhu can pad up. As he emerged from the jampacked court room last week, it was an Urdu couplet Sidhu resorted to: "Hamne aandhiyon mein bhi chirag aksar jalaye hain" (Often have I lit lamps in the storm). The conviction is admittedly a setback for the SAD-BJP combine, but its leaders believe Sidhu's popular appeal in Punjab will help him weather this storm too. For the moment, there is a temporary lull, given that the high court has stayed the sentence till January 31 to enable him to appeal in the apex court.

Sidhu's supporters blame the Amarinder Singh government for speeding up the case since a lower court had acquitted him in '99. But the claim does not hold water, as the family of the victim, Gurnam Singh, had gone in appeal against the acquittal in '99 itself, while the Punjab government filed its appeal a year later. Sidhu's case was among the 150-odd criminal appeals pending before the HC. Ironically, it was to provide adequate work for 14 new judges that H.S. Bedi, the acting chief justice last year, ordered that all pending appeals against acquittals be listed for hearing before the three division benches. Sidhu's case happened to be among them.

In fact, in the 18 years since Sidhu and his friend Rupinder Singh Sandhu bludgeoned Gurnam Singh in a Patiala parking lot, political parties have been divided in their opinion. Ironically, depending on his and his family's existing political affiliations, the Congress and the BJP have alternately backed the ex-cricketer or been against him.

When the incident took place in December 1988, Punjab was under President's rule and governor S.S. Ray, a Congress strongman then, is said to have extended Sidhu tacit support as his father Bhagwant Singh Sidhu was Advocate-General of Punjab in the Congress government. Sidhu's father then became the president of the Patiala District Congress and had the ear of chief minister Beant Singh. It was at this point that the district attorney, on December 8, 1994, moved an application under section 321 of the CrPC seeking withdrawal of the prosecution's case "in public interest". The application was dismissed by the district and sessions judge of Patiala, Justice R.L. Anand, on the grounds that it was mala fide and motivated.

Sidhu then moved a revision petition before the high court in 1995, but this too was dismissed in 1999. The trial continued in the district court. In September 1999, he was acquitted. Till then, Sidhu hadn't joined the BJP. So, it was the ruling SAD-BJP combine which filed a revision petition in the HC (victim Gurnam was an Akali supporter)! Now the Congress, which once backed him, celebrates his conviction since he's in the BJP camp. The Akalis too have a bit of an embarrassment on their side. Supremo Parkash Singh Badal is a mentor of sorts for Sidhu, but Avtar S. Ghalauri, the prime witness on whose testimony Sidhu's been convicted, is a staunch Akali.

While Sidhu and his party assess the damage the conviction might have done to his political career, Gurnam Singh's family can't stop lamenting the inadequacy of the judgement. "Navjot has killed a man and the courts have pronounced him guilty. But he will not be sent to jail. What kind of justice is this?" asks Gurnam's son Ripuinderjit. Both sides are preparing to appeal against the verdict in the apex court. "In all these 18 years, Sidhu and Sandhu have not spent even 18 days in jail. Isn't this a tamasha?" asks the dead man's family. Seems the twists and turns of this case are as bizarre as Sidhu's truisms on tee-vee.