NEW DELHI – Sajjan Kumar, a senior member of India’s Congress party, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the mass murder of Sikhs that followed the assassination of the prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1984.
The 1984 anti-Sikh riots, also known as the 1984 Sikh Massacre, was a series of organised pogroms against Sikhs in India by anti-Sikh mobs (notably Congress Party members) in response to the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.
Kumar was accused of leading a mob into a south-west Delhi neighbourhood the day after Gandhi, 66, was shot dead by the two guards as she walked in the garden of the prime minister’s residence on the morning of 31 December. The assassination was retribution for her decision four months earlier to send Indian soldiers into the Golden Temple, Sikhism’s holiest site, to flush out an extremist spiritual leader, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, and his armed followers.
Kumar, 73, was a member of parliament at the time of the offences. He was tried with five others from 2010 but acquitted of all charges three years later.
That decision was overturned on Monday when he was convicted of crimes including abetting murder and criminal conspiracy.
“It is important to assure the victims that despite the challenges, truth will prevail and justice will be done,” the Delhi High Court said in Monday’s judgement.
Kumar has until 31 December to surrender to police, the NDTV reports.
Independent sources estimate the number of deaths at about 8,000 – 17,000. Official Indian government reported about 2,800 Sikhs were killed in Delhi. Nearly 90 Indian soldiers also died. The attack badly damaged the temple and came to be seen as an assault on Sikhism, fuelling civil and militant Sikh campaigns for an independent homeland, Khalistan.
