‘Brutal, reprehensible’: Court hands Sajjan Kumar life term in another anti-Sikh riots case

In Tuesday’s case, the prosecution had accused Kumar of leading a mob that burned alive Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh in Delhi’s Saraswati Vihar on November 1, 1984, and destroyed and looted their houses.

The court said the offences committed by Kumar were “undoubtedly brutal and reprehensible”, but certain mitigating factors, including his age (80 years), illnesses and conduct in jail, “weigh in favour of imposing a lesser sentence, instead of death penalty”.

“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 court said in her sentencing order.

“The helplessness of the victims and the lack of any support whatsoever from the neighbours and also the police has also been established from their uncontroverted depositions. In these circumstances, I am of the considered opinion that this is a fit case where the convict must also be awarded life imprisonment…,” she said.

Along with murder (read with being a member of an unlawful assembly), Kumar was also sentenced to life for arson (read with being a part of unlawful assembly).

Other offences in which he was sentenced were attempting to commit culpable homicide, voluntarily causing hurt, dacoity, rioting, and rioting with a deadly weapon. He was also fined over Rs 2.4 lakh. All his sentences will run concurrently.

The FIR in this case was registered in 1991, based on an affidavit dated September 9, 1985, filed by the complainant — the wife and mother of the victims —before the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission which was set up in 1985 to investigate the “organised violence”. The complainant was represented by senior advocate H S Phoolka and advocates Kamna Vohra and Gurbaksh Singh in court.

Kumar’s counsel, Anil Kumar Sharma, Anuj Sharma and Apoorav Sharma, told The Indian Express that they were likely to file an appeal against the sentence. Seeking death penalty for Kumar, the prosecution led by Additional Public Prosecutor Manish Rawat had submitted before the court last week that an incident of this kind breaks the “entire fibre of trust and harmony amongst communities”. Kumar was convicted in the case on February 12.

The Tihar Jail authorities had also submitted Kumar’s medical report and a report on his conduct. Citing this, the court said: “The ‘satisfactory’ conduct of the convict as per the report of the jail authorities, the ailments from which he is reportedly suffering, the fact that the convict has roots in the society and the possibility of his reformation and rehabilitation are material considerations which, in my opinion, tilt the scales in favour of sentence for life imprisonment instead of death penalty.”

Kumar faces several other cases linked to the 1984 riots. In September 2023, a Delhi court acquitted him in a case linked to the murder of seven people from the Sikh community in Sultanpuri. He has another pending case in Rouse Avenue court, two appeals against his acquittals in the Delhi High Court and an appeal against his conviction in one case in the Supreme Court.