Sajjan Kumar Dies Serving Life Sentence: A Timeline Of His 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots Cases

The assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984, was followed by four days of anti-Sikh violence in Delhi. More than 2,700 Sikhs were confirmed killed during the violence, which left a long-running question of justice and accountability.

Former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar, who died on Thursday, was among those whose alleged role in the violence became the subject of a prolonged legal battle. His cases spanned several investigations, trials, convictions and acquittals over decades.

Kumar was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court in December 2018 in a case concerning the killing of five Sikhs in Delhi Cantonment's Raj Nagar area on November 1, 1984. He was found guilty of murder, promoting enmity between groups and defiling public property.

From Acquittal To Conviction

The 2018 conviction related to the killing of five members of a Sikh family in Raj Nagar. The victims were Kehar Singh, Gurpreet Singh, Raghuvender Singh, Narender Pal Singh and Kuldeep Singh.

According to the prosecution, a mob allegedly instigated by Kumar killed the five Sikhs during the violence. Kumar had been a prominent Congress leader and a three-time Lok Sabha member from the Outer Delhi constituency.

The case had a long and complicated history. Kumar was acquitted by a sessions court in December 2002 in one of the cases linked to the riots.

The CBI registered another case against him on October 24, 2005, following recommendations of the G T Nanavati Commission. The case was transferred to the Karkardooma trial court in 2010, where Kumar and six other accused were named.

On April 30, 2013, the trial court acquitted Kumar while convicting five others. The acquittal led to protests, including an incident in which a protester hurled a shoe at the judge.

The CBI and Jagdish Kaur, a victim and witness in the case, subsequently challenged Kumar's acquittal before the Delhi High Court.

The CBI argued that a key witness had named Kumar in affidavits submitted before commissions investigating the violence. During the proceedings, another prosecution witness, Cham Kaur, also told the court that she had seen Kumar addressing a crowd in the capital.

The Delhi High Court eventually overturned the trial court's acquittal in December 2018 and sentenced Kumar to life imprisonment.

Second Life Sentence

Kumar received another life sentence in 2025 in a separate case relating to the killing of two Sikh men in Saraswati Vihar on November 1, 1984.

The Delhi court found that Kumar had led a mob that burned alive Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh. The court also held him responsible for the looting and destruction of their houses, as The Indian Express reported.

Kumar was convicted in the case in February, 2025. Along with murder, he was convicted of offences including arson, attempting to commit culpable homicide, voluntarily causing hurt, dacoity and rioting with a deadly weapon.

The court sentenced him to life imprisonment for murder and arson, with the sentences running concurrently, and imposed a fine of more than Rs 2.4 lakh.

The court described the offences as “undoubtedly brutal and reprehensible”. However, it cited Kumar's age, illnesses, jail conduct and the possibility of his reformation and rehabilitation while deciding against the death penalty.

The case itself originated from an FIR registered in 1991 on the basis of an affidavit filed by the victims' wife and mother before the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission.

Mixed Legal Record

Kumar was also acquitted in other cases linked to the 1984 violence. In September 2023, a Delhi court acquitted him in a case concerning the murder of seven members of the Sikh community in Sultanpuri.

Earlier in January, Kumar was acquitted in a case concerning alleged incitement of violence in Janakpuri during the riots. The FIR in that case had been registered in 1992, and Kumar was the only accused.

A separate FIR concerned the alleged killing of Sohan Singh and his son-in-law Avtar Singh in Vikaspuri. A joint chargesheet covering the Janakpuri and Vikaspuri cases was filed in 2022. Kumar was discharged in the Vikaspuri case in 2023, where he had faced a murder charge.

The cases were reviewed in 1990 by a committee headed by Justice J D Jain and former Delhi Police chief D K Aggarwal. They were later taken up for reinvestigation after a Special Investigation Team was constituted in 2015 to examine serious cases arising from the violence.

Kumar's legal record, therefore, included both convictions and acquittals across multiple cases linked to the 1984 riots. He resigned from the Congress after his 2018 conviction and remained lodged in Tihar Jail while serving his life sentence.