Gikki murder case: All four accused get life term

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, August 3

The much-awaited verdict in the murder of Jalandhar hotelier Gurkirat Singh Sekhon (Gikki) was out on Monday with Gurdaspur District and Sessions Judge SK Garg sentencing all the four accused to life imprisonment with rigorous imprisonment under Section 304 (1) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and Section 34 (common intention to hurt) of the IPC. The four were also sentenced under various provisions of the Arms Act. Besides a fine of Rs 10,000 was also slapped on each of them.

Minutes after the judgment was pronounced, Rajbir Sekhon, father of Gurkirat Sekhon, said he would appeal in the Punjab and Haryana High Court against the verdict. At an impromptu press conference outside the Judge’s chamber, he claimed that the accused should have been sentenced under Section 302 (murder) of the IPC.

All the accused — Ram Simran Singh Makkar alias Prince Makkar, Sunny Sachdeva, Jasdeep Singh Jassu and Amarpreet Singh Narula- were present in the open court when the sentence was delivered.

They had entered the court as undertrials but walked out as convicts after 20 minutes. They have been serving time in the Gurdaspur Central Jail ever since the murder took place on the intervening night on April 20 and 21 in 2011. An FIR was registered against all the four at the Division No 6 police station, Jalandhar, under Sections 302 and 120 (B) of the IPC on Rajbir Sekhon’s complaint to the police.

The case was transferred to the Gurdaspur sessions court in 2012.

Minutes after the verdict was delivered, the accused were driven back to the jail amid tight security. The police had made elaborate security arrangements in and around the judicial complex since morning. The judgement was pronounced in the forenoon.

District Attorney JK Chopra led the battery of lawyers for the prosecution side, which included Deputy District Attorney HS Bajwa, APS Randhawa, Baltej Singh Dhillon, Pushkar Nanda, RK Anand and Sukhman Singh Randhawa.

On the intervening night of April 20 and 21, 2011, Ram Simran Singh Makkar and three of his accomplices had allegedly killed Gurkirat Singh Sekhon in the posh Model Town area of Jalandhar city. The Sekhons own Hotel Sekhon Grand in Jalandhar. At the time of the incident, Makkar, a nephew of the then SAD MLA Sarabjit Singh Makkar, was a Municipal Councillor.

The victim and Prince Makkar were childhood friends and had studied together in St Joseph’s Convent School and then in Apeejay School. Later, they fell apart over some dispute.