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Journalism of Courage
A Delhi court on Wednesday convicted former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar in a case related to the killings of two men in Delhi’s Saraswati Vihar on November 1, 1984, during the anti-Sikh riots. Arguments on the quantum of sentence in this case will take place on February 18.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT), which was probing this case, alleges that Kumar, who was then the 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. The SIT was represented in the court by Additional Public Prosecutor Manish Rawat.
Kumar’s counsel Anil Kumar Sharma, Anuj Sharma and Apoorav Sharma argued that the complainants, the wife and the mother of the victims, had claimed to be an eyewitness in the case after a long delay of seven years and that their testimonies were therefore unreliable. The complainants were represented by senior advocate H S Phoolka and advocates Kamna Vohra and Gurbaksh Singh.
Widespread riots broke out in Delhi and other parts of the country after then prime minister Indira Gandhi was murdered by two Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for her order for the Army to storm the Golden Temple at Amritsar in June 1984 to flush out militants.
The FIR in this case was registered in 1991 on the basis of an affidavit dated September 9, 1985, given by the complainant before the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission, which was appointed in 1985 by then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi “to inquire into the organised violence that took place in Delhi and also the disturbances in the Bokaro Tehsil and Chas Tehsil (both in present-day Jharkhand) and at Kanpur, and to recommend measures that may be adopted for prevention of recurrence of such incidents.”
On December 4, 2021, the Rouse Avenue Court of Special Judge M K Nagpal framed charges against the accused for the offences of murder, rioting with a deadly weapon, unlawful assembly and attempt to commit culpable homicide, among others.
Kumar is currently lodged in Tihar Jail serving a life sentence handed down by the Delhi High Court 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.
In September 2023, a Delhi court acquitted Kumar in a case related to the murder of seven people from the Sikh community in Sultanpuri during the 1984 riots. One case is pending against Kumar in the Rouse Avenue court, two appeals against his acquittals are pending in the high court, and an appeal against his conviction in one case is pending in the Supreme Court.
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