A Delhi court on Thursday acquitted former Congress parliamentarian Sajjan Kumar in a case linked to allegations of inciting violence in the Janakpuri and Vikaspuri areas of the capital during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, marking another legal chapter in the decades-long pursuit of accountability for the mass violence that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Court pronounces acquittal; detailed order awaited
Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh orally delivered a brief order acquitting Kumar on Thursday. The court said a reasoned judgment would be issued later. The case related to allegations that Kumar instigated rioting and communal violence in parts of west Delhi during November 1984.
In August 2023, the trial court had framed charges against Kumar for rioting and promoting enmity, while discharging him of murder and criminal conspiracy in the same proceedings.
FIRs stemmed from Janakpuri and Vikaspuri incidents
The case arose from two first information reports registered by a special investigation team in February 2015. One FIR concerned violence in Janakpuri, where two men—Sohan Singh and his son-in-law Avtar Singh—were killed on November 1, 1984.
The second FIR related to the killing of Gurcharan Singh, who was allegedly set ablaze on November 2, 1984, in Vikaspuri.
Acquittal contrasts with ongoing life sentence
Kumar, who remains in jail, is serving a life sentence awarded by a trial court on February 25 last year in a separate case involving the killings of Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh in Delhi’s Saraswati Vihar area on November 1, 1984.
In that judgment, the court held that although the deaths of “two innocent persons” were grave, the matter did not amount to a “rarest of rare case” warranting the death penalty. It further observed that the killings formed part of a continuing sequence of violence for which Kumar had already been punished.
Earlier convictions upheld by higher courts
In December 2018, the Delhi High Court sentenced Kumar to life imprisonment for causing the deaths of five people during rioting in the Palam Colony area following Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
His appeal against that conviction and sentence is currently pending before the Supreme Court of India.
Riots probe reveals limited convictions
According to the findings of the Nanavati Commission, 587 FIRs were registered in Delhi in connection with the 1984 violence, which claimed 2,733 lives in the capital alone. Of these, about 240 cases were closed as “untraced”, while nearly 250 resulted in acquittals.
Only 28 FIRs culminated in convictions, leading to the conviction of around 400 individuals. Approximately 50 people, including Kumar, were found guilty of murder.
