The lawyers who appealed in the Punjab and Haryana high court against a lower court's verdict, which acquitted Navjot Singh Sidhu of murder, are satisfied with the verdict.
Vinod Ghai and his father R S Ghai, the advocates who represented Jasvinder Singh, the victim Gurnam Singh's son, said they were confident that they would get a conviction against Sidhu.
Gurnam Singh died after a scuffle with the former cricketer and BJP MP from Amritsar on 27th December 1988 over parking space.
"The moment the case came to us in 1999, we found that the trial court had erred in acquitting Sidhu while sentencing his friend Bupinder Singh Sandhu. Sidhu had been named in the FIR lodged soon after the incident, while his friend had not been named.
"At least a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder must have been made against him," Vinod Ghai told rediff.com soon after the conviction was delivered.
Sidhu now has the option of either appealing against the verdict in the high court or approach the Supreme Court.
He would have to appear before the division bench of Justice Mohinder Singh Gill and Justice Balbir Singh on December 6 when the court would hear the arguments on the quantum of sentence by the prosecution and the defence counsel.
"We were able to convince the court that there is a case against Sidhu and I am glad that the court upheld our contention and quashed the order of the lower court," Ghai said.
Sidhu, who resigned after the judgment, is expected to join his advocates U U Lalit and S S Dhaliwal to decide on what he will do next.
Neither Sidhu nor the complainant Jasvinder Singh was present in the court when the judgment was delivered.
On the quantum of the sentence, a senior advocate at the high court said, "They can leave him under probation or just ask him to pay a hefty fine to the family of the deceased."
Sidhu had planned to contest the MLA elections from Patiala in the forthcoming assembly elections against Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh.