1984 riots: HC to hear Sajjan Kumar’s appeal against conviction, life term in November

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Friday said it will hear in November an appeal by former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar challenging his conviction and life imprisonment in a murder case connected to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case. The appeal was scheduled to come up for hearing before a bench of Justices Vivek Chaudhary and Manoj Jain, which did not hold the court. The matter has now been fixed for November 19. Kumar was awarded life imprisonment on February 25 by a trial court here, which said that the convict's old age and illness weighed in favour of a lesser sentence instead of the death penalty. The trial court said that though the killings of “two innocent persons” in the case were no less an offence, it was not a “rarest of rare case” warranting the imposition of the death penalty. The case relates to the killings of Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh on November 1, 1984.

The offence of murder attracts a maximum punishment of the death penalty and minimum of life imprisonment. The trial court had said that the case at hand was part of the same incident and could be seen as a continuity of the incident for which Kumar was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court on December 17, 2018. He was then found guilty of having caused the death of five people during a similar incident of rioting post the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The trial court therefore awarded life imprisonment to Kumar for being part of the mob which set afire the house of the victims and “brutally killed” the two victims, besides looting their belongings. It had also imposed a fine of around Rs 2.4 lakh on Kumar. According to a report of the Nanavati Commission, constituted to probe the violence and its aftermath, there were 587 FIRs filed in Delhi in relation to the riots that saw killings of 2,733 people. Of the total, about 240 FIRs were closed by police as “untraced”, and 250 cases resulted in acquittal. Of the 587 FIRs, only 28 resulted in convictions, in which about 400 people were convicted. About 50 people, including the former MP, were convicted of murder. Kumar, an influential Congress leader and an MP at the time, was accused in a case over the killings of five people in Delhi’s Palam Colony on November 1 and 2, 1984. He was awarded life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court in the case, and his appeal challenging the punishment is pending before the Supreme Court.