The Supreme Court on Thursday said it would hear former Congress leader Sajjan Kumar’s plea challenging his conviction and life sentence in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case after the Diwali recess.
The court’s Diwali vacation begins on October 20 and judicial work resumes on October 27. A bench of Justices J.K. Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi asked the counsels representing the parties to specifically outline the allegations, witness testimonies, and the findings of both the trial court and the Delhi High Court.
“When the reversal was made, what persuaded the high court to make a reversal?” the bench queried, referring to the Delhi High Court’s 2018 verdict overturning the trial court’s 2010 acquittal of Kumar.
Senior advocate R.S. Cheema appeared for the CBI, while senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan represented Kumar. Appeals of co-convicts Balwan Khokhar and Girdhari Lal were also listed alongside Kumar’s plea.
The case relates to the killing of five Sikhs and the burning of a Gurdwara in Delhi Cantonment’s Raj Nagar area on November 1–2, 1984, following the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.
In December 2018, Kumar surrendered before a trial court after the Delhi High Court convicted him and sentenced him to life imprisonment for the remainder of his natural life. The High Court held him guilty of criminal conspiracy, abetment in murders, promoting enmity on religious grounds, and destruction of a Gurdwara.
Following his conviction, Kumar resigned from the Congress party.
In its judgment, the High Court described the 1984 violence as a “carnage of unbelievable proportions”, noting that over 2,700 Sikhs were killed in the national capital alone. The riots, it observed, were a “crime against humanity” committed with the backing of political patronage and facilitated by an indifferent law enforcement machinery.
The High Court had also upheld varying sentences imposed on five other convicts, including Khokhar and Lal.
