Congress chief Sajjan Kumar. File
| Listing Credit ranking: Sushil Kumar Verma
A Delhi courtroom on Thursday (January 22, 2026) acquitted worn Congress MP Sajjan Kumar in a case connected to inciting violence in Janakpuri and Vikaspuri areas in the national capital in the future of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Particular Identify Dig Vinay Singh orally pronounced a temporary show acquitting Mr. Kumar. A reasoned show is awaited.
In August 2023, a courtroom had charged Mr. Kumar with rioting and promoting enmity, whereas discharging him of abolish and criminal conspiracy offences.
In February 2015, a distinct investigation crew registered two FIRs in opposition to Kumar in accordance with complaints of violence in the Janakpuri and Vikaspuri areas in the future of the riots.
The main FIR became over the violence in Janakpuri, the assign two males — Sohan Singh and his son-in-laws Avtar Singh — had been killed on November 1, 1984.
The 2d FIR became registered in the case of Gurcharan Singh, who became allegedly declare ablaze on November 2, 1984, in Vikaspuri.
Mr. Kumar, who is at the moment in jail, became awarded lifestyles imprisonment on February 25 closing yr by a trial courtroom in a case regarding the killings of Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh on November 1, 1984, in the Saraswati Vihar declare.
It had said that even though the killings of “two innocent persons” in the case had been no less an offence, it became now not a “rarest of rare case” warranting the imposition of the demise penalty.
The trial courtroom had additionally said that the case at hand became section of the the same incident and would perhaps impartial be viewed as a continuity of the incident for which Mr. Kumar became sentenced to lifestyles imprisonment by the Delhi High Court on December 17, 2018.
The High Court had discovered him responsible of having brought regarding the demise of five other folks in the future of an analogous incident of rioting in the Palam Colony declare, post the assassination of worn Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
In line with a file of the Nanavati Payment — constituted to probe the violence and its aftermath — there were 587 FIRs filed in Delhi when it comes to the riots that noticed killings of two,733 other folks. Of the entire, about 240 FIRs had been closed by police as “untraced”, and 250 conditions resulted in acquittal.
Of the 587 FIRs, ideal 28 resulted in convictions, by which about 400 other folks had been convicted. About 50 other folks, including the worn MP, had been convicted of abolish.
Mr. Kumar, an influential Congress chief and an MP on the time, became accused in a case connected to the killing of five other folks in Delhi’s Palam Colony on November 1 and a pair of, 1984.
He became awarded lifestyles imprisonment by the Delhi High Court in the case, and his allure bright the punishment is pending sooner than the Supreme Court.
Printed – January 22, 2026 11:28 am IST
