New Delhi: A Delhi court Tuesday sentenced former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar to life imprisonment for the murder of two Sikh men during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Kumar was convicted on February 12 by Special Judge Kaveri Baweja of Rouse Avenue court in the case involving the killings of Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh in Delhi’s Saraswati Vihar on November 1, 1984.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT), which was probing this case, alleged that Kumar had led a mob that burned alive the two men and destroyed and looted their houses acting on his directions.
Currently, Kumar is lodged in Tihar Jail, where he is serving a life sentence handed down by the Delhi High Court in 2018 in a case related to the killing of five Sikhs at Raj Nagar Part I in Palam Colony on November 1-2, 1984, and the burning down of a gurdwara in Raj Nagar Part II.
Seeking the death penalty for Kumar in the case, the prosecution led by Additional Public Prosecutor Manish Rawat submitted before the court last Tuesday that an incident of this kind breaks the “entire fibre of trust and harmony amongst communities”. Following this, Tihar Jail submitted a medical report and a report on his conduct in prison. In sum, the judge considered mitigating circumstances and aggravating circumstances while deciding Kumar’s sentence.
Kumar faces several other cases linked to the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. In September 2023, a Delhi court acquitted him in a case concerning the murder of seven people from the Sikh community in Sultanpuri during the riots. He has another pending case in Rouse Avenue court, along with two appeals against his acquittals in the Delhi High Court and an appeal against his conviction in one case in the Supreme Court.
In 1984, widespread riots erupted in Delhi and other regions of the country following the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards. The assassination was in retaliation to her decision to deploy the Army to storm the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984 to remove militants.
