New Delhi, December 17: The Delhi High Court on Monday convicted Congress leader Sajjan Kumar and others in a case related to 1984 anti-Sikh riots. While pronouncing the verdict, the high court also made stinging remarks and called the anti-Sikh riots 'mass killings engineered by political actors'. Judges were reportedly emotional while delivering the judgment.

A bench of Justice S Muralidhar and Justice Vinod Goel overturned a trial court judgement that had acquitted Sajjan Kumar in the case related to the killing of five people in Delhi Cantonment area following the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984. Kumar, along with Captain Bhagmal, Girdhari Lal and former Congress councillor Balwan Khokhar were sentenced to life imprisonment.

The high court said political interference was made to protect Kumar. "It was an extraordinary case where it was going to be impossible to proceed against Sajjan Kumar in normal scheme of things as there appeared to be ongoing large-scale efforts to suppress cases against him by not even recording them," the court observed.

"Even if they were registered they weren't investigated properly and investigations which saw any progress weren't carried to logical end of a chargesheet actually being filed," it added. Describing the horror that was unleashed against Sikh, the court remarked what happened "was carnage of unbelievable proportions in which over 2,700 Sikhs were murdered in Delhi alone".

"In the summer of 1947, during partition, several people were massacred. 37 years later Delhi was the witness of a similar tragedy. The accused enjoyed political patronage and escaped trial," the high court observed. It said what happened between November 1 and 4 in 1984 "was engineered by political actors with the assistance of the law enforcement agencies, answer the description of "crimes against humanity".

The mass killings of Sikhs in 1984 "answer the description of crimes against humanity", the court said.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 17, 2018 12:02 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).