Sajjan Kumar, ex-Congress MP convicted for anti-Sikh riots, dies

Former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar, who was serving life sentence in connection with the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, died on Thursday, Safdarjung Hospital sources said. The hospital has not yet clarified the cause of his death. Kumar was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court on December 17, 2018, in a case related to the killing of five Sikhs and the burning of a gurdwara during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. He was who was serving a life sentence in Delhi's Tihar Jail in riot-related cases, was declared brought dead at Safdarjung Hospital. 
He was identified by the Delhi Police as the key instigator in the riots that erupted across Delhi and parts of north India following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. For more than 30 years, Sajjan Kumar was not named as an accused. Kumar's name did not appear in the statements of several commissions that investigated the riots, including the Justice Rangnath Misra Commission and the Jain-Aggarwal panel.
Things changed in 2015 when the BJP government set up an SIT to re-examine closed anti-Sikh riot cases. The first conviction came in 2018, when Kumar was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court for his role in the deaths of five people in the Palam Colony area. A three-time Lok Sabha MP, Kumar represented the Outer Delhi constituency and was a prominent Congress leader. He resigned from the party following his conviction by the Delhi high court in 2018. Earlier this year, in January, a Delhi court acquitted Kumar in one of the cases linked to the 1984 riots. However, the acquittals did not result in his release, as Kumar continued to serve life sentences in other cases connected with the violence.