Thirty-four years after riots broke out in the Capital in the aftermath of assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, killing over 2,700 Sikhs, the trial in a number of cases is yet to see its logical conclusion.
On Tuesday, the Delhi High Court convicted Congress leader Sajjan Kumar for killing five Sikhs in the Raj Nagar area during the anti-Sikh riots and sentenced him to imprisonment for the remainder of his natural life. However, this is not the only case Mr. Kumar is currently facing in connection with the 1984 riots.
Recently, a witness had told a local court here that she saw him addressing the crowd in the Sultanpuri area that Sikhs had killed “our mother” and instigated the mob to kill them. The next date of the case hearing is December 20.
Another Congress leader Jagdish Tytler too is facing trial at a local court here in connection with riots at Gurdwara Pulbangash in North Delhi where three people were killed. Mr. Tytler was thrice given a clean chit by the CBI in the case, but the agency was directed by the court to further investigate the matter after the victims filed a protest petition challenging the agency's closure report in the case.
In February 2015, the Centre constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) for re-investigating the serious criminal cases which were filed in Delhi in connection with the 1984 riots and have since been closed. A total of 293 cases were taken up for re-investigation.
The three-member SIT is also probing Mr. Kumar’s alleged role in two other cases. One of them is the twin murders of a man and his son in west Delhi’s Punjabi Bagh.
In November, a local court awarded death sentence to a man for the murder of two men in south Delhi’s Mahipalpur. This was one of the five cases in which the SIT had filed a charge-sheet.
