How the love story of a judge's daughter went wrong, ending in murder

A judge’s daughter, Kalyani Singh, who was arrested on Wednesday (June 15) in the murder of the national-level shooter Sippy Sidhu in Chandigarh, had been in a romantic relationship with the victim, which eventually went sour.

This was revealed in an application made before a special court by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) seeking Kalyani Singh’s remand. Kalyani Singh is the daughter of the acting chief justice of Himachal Pradesh high court, Justice Sabina Singh and she was employed as an assistant professor in a college in Chandigarh.

Kalyani Singh and Sukhmanpreet Singh (alias Sippy Sidhu) were in a close relationship, and she wanted to marry him. But, her proposal was rejected by Sippy Sidhu’s parents, the CBI said. Moreover, Sippy Sidhu leaked some of her photographs to her parents and friends, and this embarrassed her family and her.

Sippy Sidhu, grandson of a former judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and son of a noted lawyer, was shot four times from a “short gun firearm” on September 20, 2015 and his body was found the next morning. He was a national-level shooter who had started his own law firm at Mohali.

At that time, Sidhu’s family had alleged the role of the woman suspect. Subsequently, the local police questioned Kalyani Singh. The victim’s relatives held protests seeking justice. Subsequently, the case was handed over to the CBI in 2016, after the Punjab governor, who also serves as the Chandigarh UT administrator had intervened in the matter.

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Further, the CBI told the special court that two days before the murder, which happened on September 20, 2015, she had contacted Sippy Sidhu using the mobile phones of other people and had “compelled” him to meet her in a park in Sector 27, Chandigarh. They met between September 18 and 20 in that park, it said.

On the day he was murdered, the CBI had found evidence that she was with Sippy Sidhu in the evening. “Investigation has further revealed that one unknown assailant and Kalyani Singh killed Sippy Sidhu by using firearms. Thereafter, both of them were seen running from the spot,” the agency told the court.

For a long time, the CBI had suspected Kalyani Singh’s role in the murder because during their investigations they knew “a woman was accompanying Sidhu’s killer”.

However, the CBI did not have enough evidence to charge her. The CBI had filed an “untraced report” in 2020 in the case stating they did not enough evidence to charge her but sought permission to continue investigation because of “strong suspicion on her”.

In September that year, the CBI released a newspaper advertisement and announced a ₹5 lakh reward for anyone with clues. The advertisement said that there is reason to believe that a woman was accompanying Sippy’s killer at the time of the murder. And, that the woman is also getting this opportunity to come forward and contact them if she was innocent.

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“Otherwise it shall be presumed that she was a party to the offence,” read the advertisement.

In December 2021, the CBI increased the reward to ₹ 10 lakh. Finally, based on its findings, the agency summoned Singh for questioning and arrested her as she was allegedly evasive in her responses. The CBI has now sought her remand for 10 days but the court gave it four days.

The CBI told the court that they needed to interrogate her and find out if other people were involved and to find the weapon and vehicles used in the crime.