Indian political figure gets life over 1984 Sikh massacre

A senior member of India’s main opposition Congress Party has been sentenced to life imprisonment in a case related to the mass murder of Sikhs after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984.

The New Delhi high court on Monday sentenced Sajjan Kumar — a key leader of Gandhi’s then-ruling Congress Party — to imprisonment for the “remainder of his natural life” over his role in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

Kumar was found guilty of criminal conspiracy, promoting enmity, and acts against communal harmony.

“While it is undeniable that it has taken over three decades to bring the accused in this case to justice, and that our criminal justice system stands severely tested in that process, it is essential, in a democracy governed by the rule of law, to be able to call out those responsible for such mass crimes,” the verdict read, deeming the violence against Sikhs as “crimes against humanity.”

The court said in its ruling that thousands of Sikhs across India were killed by mobs in the days after Gandhi’s assassination, including 2,733 in New Delhi alone.

“A majority of the perpetrators of these horrific mass crimes enjoyed political patronage and were aided by an indifferent law enforcement agency,” the judges said, referring to the mass killings in New Delhi and across the South Asian country between November 1 and 4, 1984.

Kumar had been acquitted of the crimes by a special court in India on April 30, 2013. The Monday verdict by the New Delhi high court overturned that ruling.

The 73-year-old was in the Congress for over four decades and had been sidelined in the last few years by the party over allegations that he had led mobs targeting Sikhs in New Delhi after Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984.

Following the Monday ruling, Kumar wrote a letter to the party’s president, Rahul Gandhi, and announced his resignation from the primary membership.

“I tender my resignation with immediate effect from the primary membership of the Indian National Congress in the wake of the judgment of the honorable high court of Delhi against me,” Kumar said in the letter.

Last month, an Indian court handed down the first death sentence since a Special Investigation Team had taken over the probe into anti-Sikh riots in 2015.

Sikhs in India make up around 20 million people, a little under two percent of India’s population of 1.25 billion people. Worldwide, they number around 27 million.

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