On Tuesday, 25th February, Rouse Avenue Court in Delhi awarded life imprisonment to former Congress leader Sajjan Kumar in the murder case of a Sikh father-son duo during the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. Sajjan Kumar received punishment for the crime 40 years after the riots broke out following the assassination of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards.

Sajjan Kumar was convicted of the murder on 12th February. Though the prosecution had demanded the death penalty, citing the Nirbhaya case and a similar ruling, Justice Kaveri Baweja awarded him life imprisonment. Kumar is currently lodged in Tihar Jail, serving a life term for another riots-related murder case.

Sikh leader Gurlad Singh said in a statement, “We will not accept anything less than the death penalty. We are not happy with the verdict of the court. We will appeal to the government to go to a higher court and announce the death penalty for Sajjan Kumar.”

In the 139-page verdict, Justice Baweja criticised police inaction despite witnessing the victims’ plight during the riots. The court stated that Sajjan Kumar participated in the unlawful gathering that was responsible for the murders of Jaswant Singh and Tarundeep Singh. As per the court documents, the mob led by Kumar attacked the house of the complainant, Jaswant’s wife, in the matter and killed the men. They also looted the house and set it on fire.

The murder of Jaswant Singh and Tarundeep Singh

OpIndia accessed the judgment in the case. According to the court document, an FIR was registered in the matter at Saraswati Vihar Police Station under Sections 147, 148, 149, 395, 397, 302, 436, and 440 of the Indian Penal Code on 9th September 1985, based on an affidavit submitted before the Ranganathan Mishra Commission of Inquiry. The complaint was also recorded before a committee consisting of Justice JD Jain and Justice DK Agarwal in August 1991.

According to the affidavit submitted by the complainant, the wife of Jaswant Singh, their house was attacked by a violent mob on the evening of 1st November 1984, leading to the murder of Jaswant Singh and Tarundeep Singh. She noted that the complaint in the matter had already been submitted to the Police Post in Punjabi Bagh. She pointed out that she did not know the leader who led the mob. However, when she later saw a photograph of the accused, it resembled the face of the man who led the mob.

Notably, though the FIR was registered in the case and a statement was recorded under Section 161 of the CrPC, the incident was never fully investigated by the police. Furthermore, it was not included in the chargesheet filed before the court in the case. The judgment stated, “The judicial record pertaining to the said case is stated to have been destroyed in the weeding out process,” and the accused, Sajjan Kumar, was never tried in that case. Thus, in 1994, when the final report in the FIR was filed in the MM court, it was mentioned that the case was “untraced” as there was insufficient evidence to initiate prosecution against anyone.

Interestingly, despite the complainant stating that she recognised Sajjan Kumar as the man who instigated the mob during the riot, no notice was issued to her before submitting the “untraced” report in court. Only a supplementary statement submitted by the complainant in 1992 was attached, in which she said that she could not say with any degree of certainty that the bearded man leading the mob was the accused.

The investigation, however, was reopened alongside other cases related to the riots by the order of the Ministry of Home Affairs in February 2015. The SIT reviewed the case and decided that it needed further investigation. The intimation about this was given to Rohini Court in 2016.

In November 2016, the complainant recorded her statement during the course of further investigation and narrated the incident of looting, arson, and the murder of her husband and son by the mob armed with deadly weapons. The complainant, her daughter, and her niece also recorded their statements, confirming that they saw the photograph of the accused 1.5 months after the incident in India Today magazine. The photograph of the accused was published on page 20 of the 15th December 1984 edition. Though the PDF of the magazine was not readily available, OpIndia found Sajjan Kumar’s photograph published in the cover story of the 15th December edition.

What happened on the day of the incident

On 1st November 1984, around 4 to 4:30 pm, a violent mob armed with iron rods and lathis attacked a house in the Raj Nagar area of Delhi, where the victims, including the complainant and her family, were staying. The mob, consisting of thousands, broke doors and windows, looted valuables, and set the house on fire. As the victims were forced to run outside, two of them were brutally killed by being burned alive in a nearby vacant plot. The others were badly beaten but somehow managed to survive. At the time, the victims could not recognise anyone from the mob as they had moved to the area only a month and a half earlier.

However, later, the complainant saw a photograph in the 15th December 1984 edition of India Today and identified the man leading the mob as the accused, a local MP from the Congress party. Two other survivors also confirmed this identification. The chargesheet accused him of leading an unlawful group armed with deadly weapons and committing crimes like rioting, dacoity, murder, attempted murder, and destruction of property by arson.

The complainant mentioned that a police official was present at the scene. When she approached him and pleaded for help to save her husband and son, he expressed his helplessness and told her that while the women should go to the roof to save themselves, her husband and son were going to be killed by the mob.

One of the public witnesses, Sarabjit Singh Bedi, who was posted in Delhi Customs at the time, played a key role in assisting the injured complainant. In his statement to the court, Bedi said he received a call on 2nd November informing him about the complainant and other women from the house who had survived. He arranged for their transportation to his house with the help of Col Sodhi, a relative posted as Commandant of the President’s Bodyguard. When he found them, they were severely injured. The complainant, who was Bedi’s wife’s sister, had a head injury and fractured ribs, while the other three women were also wounded. The complainant described how the two men had been killed by the mob, pouring petrol over them in an adjacent vacant plot and burning them alive.

The next day, when they returned to the house, they found it looted and burned. They also discovered the remains of the two murdered men, which were gathered, and the last rites were performed as per Sikh customs.

According to the complainant’s daughter, on the day of the incident, around 4:00-4:30 pm, the house was attacked from both sides, and valuables were looted and destroyed. She told the court that the mob warned the women to save themselves if they could but made it clear they would not spare her father and brother. The complainant and her cousin attempted to protect them by shielding them with their bodies, resulting in severe beatings by the mob. All the women in the house were badly injured.

In her statement, the daughter, who was only 14 years old at the time, said, “My father and brother almost became unconscious from the beatings by the mob, and we were not in a position to help them. A police official was present, but he made no attempt to assist us. Some people from the crowd came and dragged my mother and cousin away from my father and brother. Then, my father and brother were set on fire and burned alive by the mob.”

They were then pulled away by someone in the crowd and took shelter in the house of a man named Ohri. However, after 15 minutes, Ohri asked them to leave, fearing that the mob would attack his house. They then sought refuge in a nearby Gurdwara.

The court noted in its judgment that the complainant neither had the opportunity nor the trust to confide in the police, even though she participated in the investigation of case FIR No. 511/84 at Punjabi Bagh police station. The judgment stated, “This can certainly be said to be a natural reaction, keeping in view her prior experience of complete inaction and the lack of any sympathy towards the victims by the police during the horrific incident of 01.11.1984.”

The reason behind the delay

The delay in justice stemmed from police inaction, lack of proper investigation, and destruction of key judicial records. Though an FIR was registered in 1985, the case was not thoroughly investigated, and crucial evidence was lost during the “weeding out” process. Despite the complainant identifying Sajjan Kumar as the mob leader, her statement was overlooked, and no notice was issued to her before the case was marked “untraced” in 1994. It was only after the Ministry of Home Affairs ordered a fresh investigation in 2015 that the case was reopened, eventually leading to Kumar’s conviction decades later.

Sajjan Kumar’s conviction, though delayed by nearly four decades, is one of the few instances where justice was served for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The case exposes serious flaws in the legal system, where political influence and police inaction allowed perpetrators to escape accountability for years. While the verdict offers some closure to the victims’ families, the demand for harsher punishment remains. It also underscores the urgent need for systemic reforms in both the judiciary and law enforcement. Meanwhile, the plight of Kashmiri Hindus, who lost their loved ones and were displaced in the 1990s, continues to be ignored by the justice system.