Chandigarh, July 4 -- A special CBI court in Chandigarh has allowed accused Kalyani Singh's application seeking a certified copy of the electronic data relied upon by the prosecution in the trial relating to the 2015 murder of national level shooter Sukhmanpreet Singh alias Sippy Sidhu, while making it clear that any delay in supplying the copy will not be a ground to adjourn the proceedings. Special judge Bhawna Jain passed the order on Friday, allowing Singh's plea for a certified copy of the entire data contained in a pen drive, subject to payment of the requisite court fee and compliance with procedural requirements. Sidhu was shot dead by unidentified assailants while out for a walk in a park in Chandigarh's Sector 27 on the night of September 20, 2015. The investigation was transferred from the Chandigarh police to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2016. Following its probe, the CBI chargesheeted Kalyani Singh, who is facing trial on charges of murder, criminal conspiracy and causing disappearance of evidence. The defence submitted that although a copy of the electronic data had earlier been supplied under Section 207 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), the accused was entitled to a certified copy of the exhibited electronic evidence to compare it with the copy already in her possession. The application was moved after the court's copying agency declined to issue the digital copy without prior judicial permission. Opposing the plea, the CBI contended that the complete contents of the pen drive had already been supplied to the accused on January 7, 2023, and had also been compared in court with the original data. It argued that the application was unnecessary as the accused already possessed the electronic record. The court observed that while there was no dispute regarding the authenticity or integrity of the copy already supplied to the accused, she was nevertheless entitled to obtain a certified copy of the electronic evidence relied upon by the prosecution. The court directed the accused to deposit the prescribed copying fee and provide a new one terabyte hard disk to the copying agency, noting that the electronic data was voluminous. The pen drive contains data extracted from Sidhu's iPhone that was retrieved by the FBI in the United States and subsequently analysed by a forensic expert from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), whose testimony is currently underway before the trial court. Indian forensic labs were unable to bypass the Apple encryption and unlock the device, therefore CBI officially approached the FBI for assistance. However, the court clarified that since the electronic data had already been supplied to the accused and verified earlier, any delay in providing the certified copy would not constitute a valid ground for seeking an adjournment or postponement of the cross examination of prosecution witness Akhilesh Kumar, the CFSL expert, which is scheduled for July 10....