Former Congress leader Sajjan Kumar is likely to surrender before a court here on December 31 to undergo life imprisonment awarded to him in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case as the Delhi High Court rejected his plea to extend the deadline for surrender.
Kumar’s lawyer said options are running out for him as the Supreme Court is not likely to grant a hearing to his appeal against the High Court verdict during the vacation, which ends on January 1. “We will comply with the High Court judgment,” his counsel Anil Kumar Sharma said.
The 73-year-old was sentenced to life for the “remainder of his natural life” by the Delhi High Court on December 17 in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case.
In its judgment, the court had noted that over 2,700 Sikhs were killed in the Capital during the 1984 riots, which was indeed a “carnage of unbelievable proportions“.
‘Political patronage’
It also said riots were a “crime against humanity” perpetrated by those who enjoyed “political patronage” and aided by an “indifferent” law enforcement agency.
The court had added there has been a familiar pattern of mass killings since the Partition, like in Mumbai in 1993, Gujarat in 2002 and Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh in 2013, and the “common” feature of each was the “targeting of minorities” with the attacks being “spearheaded by the dominant political actors, facilitated by the law enforcement agencies”.
The case in which Kumar was convicted and sentenced is related to the killing of five Sikhs in Raj Nagar part-I of Palam Colony in south-west Delhi on November 1-2, 1984, and burning down of a Gurwara in Raj Nagar part-II.
The riots had broken out after the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984, by her two Sikh bodyguards.