The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a plea for bail by former Congress leader Sajjan Kumar, serving life imprisonment in an anti-Sikh riots case, on medical grounds.
“This is not a small case. Cannot grant you bail,” a Bench led by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde remarked.
‘A death penalty’
Senior advocate Vikas Singh, appearing for Kumar, said his client has drastically lost weight during the 20 months he spent in jail. Mr. Singh said if something untoward happens, his client’s life imprisonment would become a death penalty.
Senior advocate H.S. Phoolka, appearing for the victims, opposed the plea stating Kumar is getting adequate treatment.
“We are not treating the judgment [of the Delhi High Court which convicted and sentenced Kumar in the case] as faulty merely because it has reversed the earlier verdict. We will hear you finally someday,” the court said.
Seventy-three-year-old Kumar was sentenced to life by the Delhi High Court for murder.
The case in which Kumar is convicted and sentenced relates to the killing of five Sikhs in Delhi Cantonment’s Raj Nagar Part-I area of southwest Delhi on November 1 and 2, 1984, and the burning down of a Gurdwara in Raj Nagar Part-II.
The CBI had earlier described Kumar’s role in the crime as that of a “kingpin”. The riots broke out immediately after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984 by her two Sikh bodyguards.
