SC issues notice to CBI on Sajjan Kumar’s plea against conviction

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, January 14

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the CBI on former Congress leader Sajjan Kumar’s petition challenging the Delhi High Court verdict sentencing him to life imprisonment in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case. 

A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi said it would consider after six weeks Kumar’s plea for suspension of sentence and grant of bail pending final adjudication of his appeal against the conviction order.

Kumar (73) had moved the Supreme Court on December 22 against the High Court verdict convicting him and awarding life imprisonment in the case. He had surrendered on December 31 after the High Court rejected his plea for extension of time till January 30 to surrender.

Bringing to justice the first-ever senior Congress functionary for his role in the 1984 Sikh carnage, the Delhi High Court had on December 17 convicted the former MP of criminal conspiracy to murder five persons of the minority community and sentenced him to imprisonment for the rest of his natural life.

The case related to the killing of five Sikhs in Raj Nagar Part-I area in Palam Colony of south-west Delhi on November 1 and 2, 1984, and burning down a gurdwara in Raj Nagar Part-II.

Reversing Sajjan Kumar’s April 30, 2013, acquittal order passed by Delhi’s Karkardooma courts in the killing of the five persons, a Delhi High Court Bench headed by Justice S Muralidhar had said the trial court failed to address the charges of criminal conspiracy against Kumar.

“The criminals escaped prosecution and punishment for over two decades. It took as many as 10 committees and commissions for the investigation into the role of some of them to be entrusted in 2005 to the CBI, 21 years after the occurrence,” the HC had said.

Six accused, including Kumar, were sent for trial in 2010. Three years later, the lower court convicted five, but acquitted him.

The High Court had upheld the conviction and varying sentences awarded by the trial court to the other five. All six, including Kumar, are serving their sentence.