Kalyani Singh, 37, the prime accused in the 2015 Sippy Sidhu case, was charged with murder before a special CBI court in Chandigarh on Saturday.
She was charged under sections 302 (murder), 120-B (conspiracy to commit crime) and 201 (causing evidence of an offense to disappear or giving false information to protect an offender) of the Indian Penal Code.
On September 20, 2015, state-level gunman Sukhmanpreet Singh, also known as Sippy Sidhu, was shot dead in a park in Sector 27. Sippy Sidhu’s family has accused Kalyani of killing him when he rejected her marriage proposal.
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Kalyani is the daughter of Justice Sabina, who was serving as a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and later became the Acting Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court before retiring in April 2023.
The high-profile case was initially investigated by the Chandigarh police but was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2016. Kalyani was arrested by the CBI in June 2022 and a court hearing was held in September 2022.
The filing of charges was delayed as Kalyani, who has been out on bail since September 2022, kept filing one application after another.
The case was also scheduled for hearing on the framework of charges on Saturday when Kalyani again tried to file an application seeking documents. This time, CBI prosecutor Narender Singh strongly objected to her plea, saying it was just to delay the proceedings.