A Delhi court on Thursday acquitted former Congress MP, Sajjan Kumar, in a case related to inciting violence in Delhi’s Janakpuri and Vikaspuri areas during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh orally pronounced a brief order acquitting Kumar, while a reasoned order is awaited.
Kumar, who is presently in jail, was awarded life imprisonment on February 25, 2025, by a trial court in a case regarding the killings of Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh on November 1, 1984, in the Saraswati Vihar area.
The court said the case did not warrant a death penalty since it was not a “rarest of rare case”, although the killings of “two innocent persons” were no less an offence.
The first FIR against Kumar was lodged over the violence in Janakpuri, where two men – Sohan Singh and his son-in-law Avtar Singh – were killed on November 1, 1984. The second FIR registered against him was in the case of Gurcharan Singh, who was allegedly set ablaze on November 2, 1984, in Vikaspuri.
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Then, in February 2015, a special investigation team registered two FIRs against Kumar based on complaints of violence in the Janakpuri and Vikaspuri areas during the riots. He was charged with rioting and promoting enmity by a court in August 2023, although he was discharged of murder and criminal conspiracy offences.
Kumar, an influential Congress leader and an MP at the time, was accused in a case related to the killing of five people in Delhi’s Palam Colony on November 1 and 2, 1984, post the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The high court had later found him guilty in the case.
According to a report of the Nanavati Commission – constituted to probe the violence and its aftermath – there were 587 FIRs filed in Delhi in relation to the riots that saw killings of 2,733 people. Of the total, about 240 FIRs were closed by police as “untraced”, and 250 cases resulted in acquittal.
Of the 587 FIRs, only 28 resulted in convictions, in which about 400 people were convicted. About 50 people, including the former MP, were convicted of murder.
Kumar was awarded life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court in the case, and his appeal challenging the punishment is pending before the Supreme Court.
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