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New Delhi: Delhi’s Rouse Avenue Court has completed the hearing of the case against Sajjan Kumar, accused in the Janakpuri and Vikaspuri violence case related to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The court has scheduled the hearing of the final arguments of both the parties for Wednesday.
On 7 July, Sajjan Kumar declared himself innocent, saying that he could not have been involved in such crimes “even in his dreams” and that there was no evidence against him. Earlier, on November 9, 2023, the victim Manjeet Kaur had recorded her statement before the court in this case.
Sajjan Kumar, who was a member of Parliament at the time of the riots, has been accused of inciting the mob to kill members of the Sikh community. In an earlier judgment, the Delhi High Court had delivered a scathing verdict, saying the accused had managed to escape justice for decades due to “political patronage”.
Anti-Sikh riots broke out in 1984 after the assassination of late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.
The prime minister’s assassination was sparked by widespread anger over Indira Gandhi’s decision to order the Indian Army to flush out terrorists holed up in the Golden Temple earlier that year.
Following his assassination, mobs targeted and killed Sikhs, especially in Delhi, where large-scale arson and killings took place.
More than 3,000 Sikhs lost their lives in the violence that spread across the country. The worst incidents took place in the national capital Delhi, where more than 2,700 people were killed.
For more than three decades, many high-profile politicians accused of involvement in the riots managed to avoid punishment. However, this changed when Sajjan Kumar was convicted by the Delhi High Court, which sentenced him to life imprisonment. However, his lawyer said Kumar would appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court.
Sajjan Kumar has several cases against him in connection with the 1984 riots, including a case related to the murder of a family of five in Delhi. In the present case, Kumar faces charges for his alleged role in the murder of two Sikhs, Sohan Singh and his son-in-law Avtar Singh, in Janakpuri as well as another incident in Vikaspuri, where a man named Gurcharan Singh was allegedly set on fire.
Testifying before Special Judge Digvijay Singh of Rouse Avenue Court, 77-year-old Kumar said he has been falsely implicated and the allegations are politically motivated.
According to the report of the Nanavati Commission formed to investigate the violence, 587 FIRs related to the riots were registered in Delhi, in which 2,733 people died. Of these, about 240 FIRs were closed by the police as “untraced”, while 250 cases resulted in acquittals. Only 28 cases resulted in convictions, involving about 400 persons, of whom about 50 were convicted of murder, including Sajjan Kumar.
Kumar, then a senior Congress leader and MP, was also convicted in another case related to the murder of five people in Delhi’s Palam Colony on November 1 and 2, 1984. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court, and his appeal challenging the sentence is currently pending before the Supreme Court.
–IANS