Ex-Congress MP Sajjan Kumar sentenced to life imprisonment in 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots case

The Rouse Avenue Court in Delhi, on Tuesday, sentenced former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar to life imprisonment for leading a mob that killed two Sikhs in Delhi’s Saraswati Vihar area during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Special judge Kaveri Baweja pronounced the judgement for the alleged killing of Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh on November 1, 1984.

The complainant, the wife of Jaswant Singh, and the prosecution had sought the death penalty for Sajjan Kumar.

Sajjan Kumar is currently lodged in Tihar Jail 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.

Notably, the Delhi court handed Sajjan Kumar, 79, the minimum sentence of life imprisonment for committing murder, despite the maximum penalty being the death penalty.

Sikh leader Gurlad Singh told ANI, "We will not accept anything less than the death penalty (for Sajjan Kumar). We are not happy with the verdict of the court. We will appeal to the government to go to a higher court and announce a death penalty for Sajjan Kumar."

The Delhi court had, on February 12, convicted Sajjan Kumar for the offence and sought a report from Tihar Central Jail on his psychiatric and psychological evaluation in view of a Supreme Court order asking for such a report in cases attracting capital punishment.

In September 2023, a Delhi court acquitted Sajjan Kumar in a case related to the murder of seven people from the Sikh community in Sultanpuri during the 1984 riots.

What did SIT say on Sajjan Kumar's role in 1984 anti-Sikh riots?

The Special Investigation Team (SIT), which was probing this case, on February 12 alleged that Sajjan Kumar, who was then the Congress MP for Outer Delhi, led a mob that burnt alive the two Sikh men—Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh—and destroyed and looted their houses acting on his directions. The SIT was represented in the court by Additional Public Prosecutor Manish Rawat.

Sajjan Kumar's counsel had argued that the complainants, the wife and mother of Jaswant and Tarundeep Singh, had claimed to be eyewitnesses in the case after a seven-year delay and that their testimonies were, therefore, unreliable.

Widespread riots broke out in Delhi and other parts of the country after then prime minister Indira Gandhi was murdered by two Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for her order for the Army to storm the Golden Temple at Amritsar in June 1984 to flush out militants.

The FIR in the case was registered in 1991 on the basis of an affidavit dated September 9, 1985, given by the complainant before the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission, which was appointed in 1985 by then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi “to inquire into the organised violence that took place in Delhi and also the disturbances in the Bokaro Tehsil and Chas Tehsil".