Congress MP Sajjan Kumar was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Rouse Avenue Court in Delhi on Tuesday for leading a mob that killed two Sikhs in the Delhi, Saraswati Vihar area in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The judgement was pronounced by special judge Kaveri Baweja for the alleged killing of Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh on November 1, 1984.

Kumar is currently serving a life sentence in Tihar Jail in a similar 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. The Delhi High Court sentenced him in 2018 for committing murder, despite the maximum penalty being the death penalty.

“We will not accept anything less than the death penalty (for Sajjan Singh). We are not happy with the verdict of the court. We will appeal to the govt to go to a higher court and announce death penalty forSajjan Kumar,” Sikh leader Gurlad Singh told ANI,

What SIT said

On 12 February, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) investigating this case claimed that Sajjan Kumar, the Congress MP for Outer Delhi at the time, led a mob that burned alive the two Sikh men—Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh—and destroyed and looted their homes on his orders. The SIT was represented in court by Additional Public Prosecutor Manish Rawat.

Sajjan Kumar’s attorney contended that the complainants, the wife and mother of Jaswant and Tarundeep Singh, had claimed to be eyewitnesses in the case after a seven-year delay, and that their testimony was thus untrustworthy.

Riots erupted in Delhi and other areas of the country when then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards in revenge for ordering the Army to raid the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984 to drive out extremists.