1984 anti-Sikh violence: Former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar sentenced to life for murder

A Delhi court on Tuesday sentenced former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar to life imprisonment for the murder of two men during 1984 anti-Sikh riots, Bar and Bench reported.

“From the evidence on record, it has been established that the victims in the present case not only witnessed the brutal killings of their family members at the hands of the rioting mob which the convict was a part of, but they were also witness to the burning and destruction of their dwelling house and looting of their belongings,” Special Judge Kaveri Baweja of Rouse Avenue Courts said in her sentencing order.

Large-scale riots had broken out in Delhi on October 31, 1984, after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, who was then the prime minister, by her Sikh bodyguards. Mobs, allegedly helped by some Congress leaders, had attacked Sikhs and torched their homes. Nearly 3,000 Sikhs were killed in Delhi alone.

In the case related to Kumar’s conviction, the family members of those who died – Jaswant Singh and his son Tarun Deep Singh – had alleged that a mob led by him burnt the two men alive on November 1, 1984, in the capital’s Saraswati Vihar area.

They also alleged that Kumar, who was then the Congress MP in Outer Delhi, “instigated and abetted…

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