Former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar, 1984 anti-Sikh riots convict, dies at 80

Former Congress Member of Parliament Sajjan Kumar died at the age of 80 on Thursday while serving a life sentence in Tihar Jail in connection with cases related to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. According to sources cited by news agency ANI, he was brought dead to Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi. An official cause of death has not been announced.

Kumar was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Outer Delhi constituency and was for years a prominent Congress leader in the capital. He resigned from the party's primary membership after his conviction in a case arising out of the violence that followed the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in November 1984.

He was serving a life term after being convicted in two separate cases linked to the riots. On December 17, 2018, the Delhi High Court sentenced him to life imprisonment for the killing of five Sikhs in Palam Colony in Delhi Cantonment, where a gurdwara was also set ablaze. That verdict overturned an earlier trial court acquittal.

In February 2025 he was convicted in a second case, for the killings of Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh in Saraswati Vihar on November 1, 1984. According to the prosecution, the two men were attacked by a mob with iron rods and sticks before being burnt alive. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in that case on February 25, 2025.

Not every case ended in conviction. In September 2023, a Rouse Avenue court acquitted Kumar in a case concerning the killing of three Sikhs in Sultanpuri, and in January 2026 a Delhi court acquitted him in the Janakpuri and Vikaspuri violence case.

The 2018 conviction was widely described as a turning point in the decades-long campaign for accountability over the 1984 violence, in which thousands of Sikhs were killed across Delhi. Survivors and rights groups had pressed for prosecutions for more than three decades before senior political figures were held responsible.