New Delhi, December 17: The Delhi high court on Monday held Congress leader Sajjan Kumar guilty in a case related to the 1984 anti-Sikhs riots and sentenced him to imprisonment for life. Describing what happened with Sikhs in 1984 as "mass killings engineered by political actors" the high court cited examples of various riots in Gujarat, Mumbai (Maharashtra) and Muzaffarnagar (Uttar Pradesh) to establish that similar incidents of violence have been taking place in the country.

"In India, the riots in early November 1984 in which in Delhi alone 2,733 Sikhs and nearly 3,350 all over the country were brutally murdered (these are official figures) was neither the first instance of a mass crime nor, tragically, the last," the court said, setting aside the acquittal of Sajjan Kumar and five others by a trial court 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.

"There has been a familiar pattern of mass killings in Mumbai in 1993, in Gujarat in 2002, in Kandhamal, Odisha in 2008, in Muzaffarnagar in U.P. in 2013 to name a few. Common to these mass crimes were the targeting of minorities and the attacks spearheaded by the dominant political actors being facilitated by the law enforcement agencies," the high court remarked, observing that those responsible for "crimes against humanity" received political backings to escape prosecution and punishment.

Read: Delhi HC Judgment on 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots

Notably, the Supreme Court is hearing a plea of Zakia Jafri, widow of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, challenging the clean chit given by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2002 Gujarat riots. The SIT, appointed by the apex court, conducted the investigation into the case and gave a clean chit to then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, other top politicians and bureaucrats, citing lack of "prosecutable evidence" against them.

According to official figures, over 1000, mostly Muslims, were killed in incidents of communal violence that broke out burning of a train in Godhra on 27 February 2002. Around 700 people died, mostly Muslims, during riots in early 1993 in Mumbai. The violence broke out after protests by Muslims against the demolition of Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992. More than 50 people, mostly Christians, were killed in violence that took place in Odisha's Kandhamal in 2008.

The deadly riots in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh in 2013 claimed at least 60 lives and displaced over 50,000 people.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 17, 2018 04:11 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).