A Delhi court on Thursday acquitted former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar in a case related to allegedly inciting violence in the Janakpuri and Vikaspuri areas of the national capital during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh of the Delhi District Court orally pronounced a brief order acquitting Kumar, while noting that a detailed, reasoned judgment will be issued later.
In August 2023, the court had framed charges against Kumar for rioting and promoting enmity between communities, but discharged him of the more serious offences of murder and criminal conspiracy. The case stemmed from two FIRs registered in February 2015 by a special investigation team probing incidents of violence during the riots.
The first FIR related to the killing of Sohan Singh and his son-in-law Avtar Singh in Janakpuri on November 1, 1984. The second pertained to the alleged burning alive of Gurcharan Singh in Vikaspuri on November 2, 1984.
Kumar, who remains in jail, is already serving a life sentence awarded by a trial court on February 25 last year in connection with the killings of Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh in the Saraswati Vihar area on November 1, 1984. The court had held that while the murders involved the killing of “two innocent persons,” the case did not fall under the “rarest of rare” category warranting the death penalty.
The trial court had also observed that the Saraswati Vihar case formed part of the same chain of events for which Kumar was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court on December 17, 2018. In that verdict, the High Court found him guilty of causing the deaths of five people during post-riot violence in the Palam Colony area following the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
According to the Nanavati Commission report, which investigated the 1984 riots and their aftermath, 587 FIRs were registered in Delhi in connection with the violence that claimed 2,733 lives. Of these, around 240 cases were closed as “untraced,” while nearly 250 resulted in acquittals. Only 28 FIRs led to convictions, involving about 400 individuals, with around 50 people, including Kumar, convicted of murder.
Kumar, a powerful Congress leader and sitting MP at the time of the riots, was accused in multiple cases related to the violence. His appeal against the life sentence awarded by the Delhi High Court is currently pending before the Supreme Court of India.
