Former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar has moved the Delhi High Court challenging his conviction in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case, in which two men were killed in Delhi’s Saraswati Vihar on November 1, 1984.
In February, the trial court had found him guilty of murder and rioting along with other offences and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The appeal, listed for hearing before a bench of Justices Vivek Chaudhary and Manoj Jain on Friday, has been adjourned to November 19 as the bench was not available.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT), which probed this case, alleged that Kumar, who was the then Congress MP for Outer Delhi, led a mob that burnt alive the two Sikh men — Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh — and destroyed and looted their houses acting on his directions.
Appealing against the trial court’s order, Kumar termed the verdict “wrong” and “erroneous”. He said the trial court “totally ignored the cross-examination of the defence, which clearly established that fresh allegations have been leveled and witnesses are not trustworthy and their deposition was script(ed) and does not inspire any confidence, rather their evidence creates a serious doubt”.
Kumar has submitted that the complainant in the case — wife of the deceased, her daughter and her niece — have been “manifestly planted… to give effect to a political vendetta by the investigating agency as the appellant was an elected Member of Parliament at the relevant time of the constituency consisting of place of incident”.
Kumar, in his plea, also submitted that “there is no evidence at all” of his involvement in the incident, “much less of formation of unlawful assembly and the commission of offences or any act with common object”.
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He submitted that the trial court failed to consider the fact that “the killing of Jaswant Singh, his son Tarundeep Singh and injured persons belonging to the family of the deceased was investigated twice earlier prior to present case taken over by SIT for further investigation and no evidence was found against the appellant by the… earlier investigating agencies”.
The FIR in this case was initially registered in November 1984 at the Punjabi Bagh police station. Kumar has highlighted that he was not named in this FIR.
The complainant had then filed an affidavit in September 1985 before the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission, which was appointed by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi “to inquire into the organised violence that took place in Delhi… and to recommend measures that may be adopted for prevention of recurrence of such incidents”.
Subsequently, taking the affidavit into account, an FIR was lodged at Saraswati Vihar police station in 1991.
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Kumar is currently lodged in Tihar Jail; he is serving a life sentence handed down by the HC in 2018 in a case related to the killing of five Sikhs at Raj Nagar Part I in Palam Colony on November 1-2, 1984, and the burning down of a gurdwara in Raj Nagar Part II.
Sohini Ghosh is a Senior Correspondent at The Indian Express. Previously based in Ahmedabad covering Gujarat, she recently moved to the New Delhi bureau, where she primarily covers legal developments at the Delhi High Court
Professional Profile
Background: An alumna of the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ), she previously worked with ET NOW before joining The Indian Express.
Core Beats: Her reporting is currently centered on the Delhi High Court, with a focus on high-profile constitutional disputes, disputes over intellectual property, criminal and civil cases, issues of human rights and regulatory law (especially in the areas of technology and healthcare).
Earlier Specialty: In Gujarat, she was known for her rigorous coverage in the beats of crime, law and policy, and social justice issues, including the 2002 riot cases, 2008 serial bomb blast case, 2016 flogging of Dalits in Una, among others.
She has extensively covered health in the state, including being part of the team that revealed the segregation of wards at the state’s largest government hospital on lines of faith in April 2020.
With Ahmedabad being a UNESCO heritage city, she has widely covered urban development and heritage issues, including the redevelopment of the Sabarmati Ashram
Recent Notable Articles (Late 2025)
Her recent reporting from the Delhi High Court covers major political, constitutional, corporate, and public-interest legal battles:
High-Profile Case Coverage
She has extensively covered the various legal battles - including for compensation under the aegis of North East Delhi Riots Claims Commission - pertaining to the 2020 northeast Delhi riots, as well as 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
She has also led coverage at the intersection of technology and governance, and its impact on the citizenry, from, and beyond courtrooms — such as the government’s stakeholder consultations for framing AI-Deepfake policy.
Signature Style
Sohini is recognized for her sustained reporting from courtrooms and beyond. She specialises in breaking down dense legal arguments to make legalese accessible for readers. Her transition from Gujarat to Delhi has seen her expand her coverage on regulatory, corporate and intellectual property law, while maintaining a strong commitment to human rights and lacuna in the criminal justice system.
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