1984 anti-Sikh riots: Congress leader Sajjan Kumar sentenced to life
The Delhi High Court
Monday sentenced Congress leader Sajjan Kumar to life imprisonment in a case
pertaining to the killing of five members of a Sikh family during the 1984
anti-Sikh riots. A bench of Justice S
Muralidhar and Justice Vinod Goel also made clear that Kumar’s imprisonment will be for remainder of his life.
It directed Kumar not
to leave the national capital and surrender before the court concerned on or
before December 31. The court also imposed a cost of Rs one lakh on Kumar. It held Kumar guilty
of criminal conspiracy, promoting enmity, and acts against communal harmony. Besides Kumar, the
bench upheld the trial court order awarding life term to former congress
councillor Balwan Khokhar, retired naval officer Captain Bhagalpur and Girdhari
Lal. The bench also upheld the conviction of two others in the case. In its 207-page
judgment, the
court said:
*This was an
extraordinary case where it was going to be impossible to proceed against A-1
(Kumar) in the normal scheme of things because there appeared to be ongoing large-scale efforts to suppress the cases against him by
not even recording or registering them. Even if they were registered they were
not investigated properly and even the investigations which saw any progress
were not carried to the logical end of a charge sheet actually being filed.
* The mass killings of
Sikhs between 1st and 4th November 1984 in Delhi and the rest of the country,
engineered by political actors with the assistance of the law enforcement
agencies, answer the description of crimes against humanity.
* Cases like the
present are to be viewed in the larger context of mass crimes that require a
different approach and much can be learnt from similar experiences elsewhere.
* Common to the
instances of mass crimes are the targeting of minorities and the attacks
spearheaded by the dominant political actors facilitated by the law enforcement
agencies.
* The criminals
responsible for the mass crimes have enjoyed political patronage and managed to
evade prosecution and punishment. Bringing such criminals to justice poses a
serious challenge to our legal system. Decades pass by before they can be made
answerable. This calls for strengthening the legal system. Neither crimes
against humanity nor genocide is part of our domestic law of crime.
Kumar was acquitted by
a special CBI court on April 30, 2013, while it had held five other accused
guilty of the crime. The trial court had
handed three years of jail term to former MLA Mahender Yadav and Kishan
Khokhar. The CBI and victims of
the riots had filed appeals against the acquittal of Kumar in the Delhi High
Court. The five convicted had also filed appeals against their conviction. All
appeals were heard together and the judgment was reserved on October 27. The incident is
related to the murder of five members of a Sikh family in Raj Nagar on November
1, 1984... read more:
see also
मध्यमार्ग का अवसान : दिलीप सिमियन (The Broken Middle, EPW, November 2014)
