Anti-Sikh riots: INC's Sajjan Kumar to contest Delhi High Court sentence
TNN Bureau. Updated: 12/17/2018 7:37:02 PM
National
New Delhi, Dec 17 (UNI) Indian National Congress leader Sajjan Kumar was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment in the infamous 1984 anti-Sikh riots by Delhi High Court on Monday, closing a chapter in a dark patch in the history of the world's largest democracy.
The court also imposed a fine of Rs five lakh on the 1977 Delhi Councillor.
His counsel Anil Sharma told media persons that Kumar will move the Supreme Court after applying the minds against the verdict.
'This was a case of no evidence.We need time to interpret the judgement and we respect the verdict of Delhi High Court,' counsel averred.
Kumar was ordered to surrender before the court by New Year's Eve.
A division bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Vinod Goel reversed the judgement passed in 2013 in which the trial court had acquitted Kumar.
The HC observed, "In the summer of 1947, during the Partition, several people were massacred. Thirty-seven years later Delhi was the witness of a similar tragedy. The accused enjoyed political patronage and escaped trial."
Pertaining to the murder of five Sikhs in the Delhi Cantonment area during the riots in 1984, the appeal was filed by the convicted in the case, Central Bureau of Investigation and the families of the victims.
The mayhem in which an estimated 3,000 Sikhs were killed spread after the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her bodyguards for ordering the Army into the Golden Temple to suppress a separatist uprising.
Trial court had awarded life imprisonment to former Congress Councillor Balram Khokhar, retired Naval officer Bhagmal and Girdhari Lal and three year jail term for Kishan Khokhar and former MLA Mahender Yadav.
The case was transferred to Patiala House court from Karkardooma court on the direction of Delhi HC, which directed the district judge to video record the proceedings at the cost of the accused persons.
In May 2013, the convicts had challenged the verdict and sentencing order of the trial court.
On November 16 this year, Cham Kaur, a prosecution witness, testified that she had seen Kumar in 1984 addressing the crowd in Delhi's Sultanpuri area. Another prosecution witness, Sheela Kaur, had also identified Kumar as an instigator of the mob in Sultanpuri area.