Among the dates of infamy in post-Independence India,1984 is one of the darkest ones. A year when the nation faced two tragedies, inextricably linked. The assassination of a sitting prime minister by her own security guards. And the ‘retaliatory’, heart-wrenchingly brutal massacre of Sikhs, in and around Delhi in particular, that came almost as a betrayal of Indira Gandhi’s principles.

The then prime minister had refused to remove her Sikh bodyguards despite intelligence reports advising her against it, in view of how Operation Bluestar had nearly destroyed the Golden Temple, the highest seat of the Sikh faith. In one fell swoop, a prime minister known for her boldness, a community historically known for its valour—also one of India’s most syncretic faiths—and thousands of its adherents, all lay bloodied. What’s worse, those who lit the fire in the streets of Delhi—burnt the home and hearth of innocent citizens, killed them for no reason except their faith—had not really been punished.

The victims of 1984 have had to carry their grief and grievance within them, even as many migrated to the West. Hence, when the magistrate pronounced the first 1984 death sentence—on a case of two Sikh men, Avtar Singh and Hardev Singh, being killed in Mahipalpur, near an airport named after the late prime minister—it came as a sort of closure (or opening, if you prefer), in the judicial sense. Another person was given a life sentence, ironically in a court that held its hearing in Tihar jail for security reasons.

Convictions in riot cases, or any incident of mass/communal violence, have always been abysmally low in India. Wherever one stands on capital punishment, this can be seen as a judgment that balances a historical wrong, albeit ever so lightly and 34 years too late.