22 January,2026 04:19 PM IST | New Delhi | mid-day online correspondent
Sajjan Kumar Kumar, a Congress MP at the time, was convicted for the killings in Palam Colony and sentenced to life imprisonment. FILE PIC
A Delhi court on Thursday acquitted former Congress Member of Parliament (MP) Sajjan Kumar in a case related to inciting violence in the Janakpuri area of the national capital during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, news agency PTI reported.
Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh orally pronounced a brief order acquitting Kumar. A reasoned order is awaited.
In August 2023, the court had framed charges against Kumar for rioting and promoting enmity, while discharging him of charges of murder and criminal conspiracy.
In February 2015, a special investigation team (SIT) registered two first information reports (FIRs) against Kumar based on complaints of violence in the Janakpuri and Vikaspuri areas during the riots.
The first FIR was related to the violence in Janakpuri, where Sohan Singh and his son-in-law Avtar Singh were killed on November 1, 1984. The second pertained to the killing of Gurcharan Singh, who was set ablaze on November 2, 1984, in Vikaspuri.
Kumar, who is currently lodged in jail, was awarded life imprisonment on February 25 last year by a trial court in a separate case concerning the killings of Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh on November 1, 1984, in the Saraswati Vihar area.
The trial court had observed that although the killings of "two innocent persons" were grave, the case did not fall under the "rarest of rare" category warranting the death penalty. It also noted that the incident formed part of the same chain of events for which Kumar was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court on December 17, 2018.
In that case, the High Court had found Kumar guilty of causing the death of five people during rioting in the Palam Colony area following the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
According to the Nanavati Commission report, which probed the riots and their aftermath, 587 FIRs were registered in Delhi in connection with the violence that claimed 2,733 lives. Of these, around 240 FIRs were closed as "untraced" and 250 cases ended in acquittal.
Only 28 FIRs resulted in convictions, leading to the conviction of about 400 people, including around 50 persons, among them Kumar, for murder.
Kumar, an influential Congress leader and an MP at the time, was convicted for the killings in Palam Colony and sentenced to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court. His appeal challenging the sentence is pending before the Supreme Court.
(With PTI inputs)
