Sajjan Kumar, a former parliamentarian, was convicted in 2018 for his disreputable and notorious role in the mass killings of Sikhs during the violence that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in November 1984. He died on August 20, 2026, bringing back painful memories of the communal violence and questions about the prolonged pursuit of justice. While critics have pointed to the mischaracterisation of the violence, victims’ families have expressed little consolation at his passing, instead referring to Sajjan Kumar’s death as “an abrupt end to the battle that they had hoped would culminate in the harshest punishment.” Using this observation as our segue, we argue that Kumar’s political downfall, incarceration and eventual passing should not distract us from the fundamental issues of criminal justice, particularly questions around police investigation, political opportunism and vendetta in the dispensing of justice. Moving beyond issues of the deservingness or ‘appropriate’ nature of karma for perpetrators and/or impacts of inter-generational trauma within families, this essay focuses on the content of justice in a society fractured along multiple cleavages that are beginning to assume even greater salience today.Sajjan Kumar’s conviction and incarcerationElected multiple times as an MP from Outer Delhi, Kumar was convicted in 2018, nearly three decades later, for his role in provoking mobs and extolling murderous violence against the Sikh community in 1984, at Palam Colony. As a politician, Kumar exerted enough political and street-level clout to hold even a team of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials hostage when they attempted to follow court orders and secure his custody in 1991. That it took the criminal justice system over three-decades to convict him is in equal measure an indictment of a sluggish judiciary and an indication of street power wielded by politicians, thwarting accountability measures in post-colonial India. One conviction, but a larger failureKumar’s conviction could be taken as proof that the system eventually dispenses justice. However, focusing on this singular conviction potentially overlooks the multiple other instances in which the judiciary missed opportunities to extend similar relief to aggrieved families. Even in Kumar’s case, it was only after persistent efforts of individuals over 30-plus years that only one leader could be held accountable. Tellingly, the families and descendants of the victim-survivors residing in Tilak Vihar, while commemorating the 40th anniversary of the pogroms in 2024, put up a flex-banner declaring: “Justice Denied.” This despite Kumar having been convicted six-years ago. Why? Below, we present an analysis of two judgements that acquitted Kumar of his crimes but symbolically showcased how the judiciary could become complicit in perpetuating injustices against victims of massacres, leading to the kind of exasperated declarations noted above by the residents of Tilak Vihar.Photos taken during the PUDR investigation in the first week of November, 1984, shortly after the anti-Sikh pogrom. In this photo, affected families are seen leaving their homes after the violence. Photo: Sudesh Vaid, IP College, Delhi.In a verdict delivered by the district and sessions court (Karkardooma), North-East Delhi, CBI vs. Sajjan Kumar & Ors. 2013, involving the killings of five Sikhs in Raj Nagar, the court convicted all the accused apart from Kumar, despite the ‘star-witness’ Jagdish Kaur’s testimony naming Kumar to the CBI as having delivered speeches provoking communal enmity and bearing culpability for the rampage that followed, which consumed the lives of her husband, son and cousins. What defied simple logic was the court’s acknowledgment of the quality of Jagdish Kaur’s testimony, without embellishments, inconsistencies or falsehoods, right from her deposition to the Ranganath Misra Commission of Enquiry in 1985, instituted to probe the pogrom. Ironically, despite agreeing with the quality of her testimony, the court acquitted Kumar, citing the non-appearance of his name in the original consolidated first information report (FIR) registered in 1984.The second case, adjudicated in 2024 at the Rouse Avenue District Court, CBI vs. Sajjan Kumar & Ors. 2023-2024, also acquitted Kumar. This time, the judge chose to extend to Kumar the ‘benefit of the doubt’ when determining both his location Palam Colony on November 1, 1984, and the extent of his involvement in actually leading the mobs to violence. Additionally, while multiple witnesses maintained that they had named Kumar, the court did not probe why his name was absent from any document till the CBI was involved, following the Nanavati Commission. What is missing from the judgements?In fact, an assessment of both judgements reveal surprisingly little about the overall context around Kumar’s political influence. Indeed, it would only be during the high court appeal in 2018 that the judiciary would take cognisance of the incident involving the hostage-taking of a CBI team in 1991, thereby failing to account for the atmosphere of intimidation and fear felt by the victims, who were already reeling from an unprecedented scale of violence and has been discarded and left for dead by the authorities. The gravitas of the crimes committed would only be taken up by Justices M. Muralidhar and Vinod Goel, who in their judgement (para 367.5 to para 367.10), explained in detail, drawing from legal, academic and scholarly precedents, the context, nature and extent of the crimes committed against Sikhs as a social group following Gandhi’s assassination. Furthermore, anecdotal evidence and real-life testimonies reveal the complicity of the police and authorities through the pogrom, thereby explaining the absence of Kumar’s name till such time as the Nanavati Commission recommended transferring the cases to the CBI in 2005. In a city where survivors struggled and scrambled in the face of repeated hostility from the police, political actors and even their own communities, the expectation that victim-survivors – especially women – would be able to follow up on the granular details of complex legal procedures was an impossible condition to meet and should have been recognised by the courts.Women survivors and their struggle for justiceBelow we recount, from our own interactions, vignettes of the damage inflicted upon families through the eyes of the women who saw it all happen before them. Darshan Kaur, who had witnessed her husband and brother-in-law murdered at the instigation of Hari Krishan Lal (H.K.L.) Bhagat – a prominent Delhi Congress leader – continued to testify, resisting bribery, coercion, intimidation and even attempts at kidnapping. Darshan eventually identified H.K.L. Bhagat in open court, defying attempts to have her confused by placing Bhagat’s lookalikes before her. While the judge was sympathetic to her plight, proceedings were dropped following the death of Bhagat in 2005. Sikh families faced widespread displacement in the wake of the riots. Photo: Sudesh Vaid, IP College, Delhi.Anwar Kaur, who lost her husband, brother-in-law and nephews through marriage to rioters, kept pursuing the case against Kumar until 2006, regularly attending court hearings. However clever manoeuvring by the defence, coupled with lack of prosecution zeal, meant that her case against Kumar collapsed. Anwar never quite recovered from her ‘failure’ and, following an accident, remained bedridden for years while suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease, before passing away on January 8, 2026. Sheela Kaur, who lost her husband, father-in-law and brother-in-law to these attacks, again at the instigation of Kumar, could not even follow-up on her case, impeded by her illiteracy and lack of support from the Sikh community.Nirpreet Kaur, after the brutal murder of her father in Raj Nagar, escaped to Punjab with her family, including her mother and younger brothers. The family subsequently filed a case, but summons were sent from the court to their Raj Nagar house, which had been abandoned. The judiciary dismissed their case in their absence but never followed up or reasonably queried the circumstances of their absence from the Raj Nagar address. This case continues to be heard in the Delhi high court today, but even after 42 years, justice continues to elude the family.Burden placed upon survivorsAll these women had seen leaders such as Bhagat and Kumar deliver fiery speeches antagonising the Sikhs. While adjudicating questions around their location, the exact contents of the speeches delivered and the relationship of the ensuing violence to such speeches, the judiciary established an extremely high threshold for conviction – a position that ignored the material reality of the women, the impact of losing male members of their family and the competing pressures of fending for their remaining family. Notwithstanding the pressures being exerted at every turn by the very same leaders. With each of the women, a lack of community support, little-to-no pushback from the prosecuting team and perfunctory investigation by the police meant that the judiciary could never pronounce a verdict that would satisfy the demands for justice. Why Kumar’s conviction remains an exceptionTherefore, outside of securing a conviction for Kumar, structural flaws within the criminal justice system, gendered nature of society and a sense of impunity have all combined to make convictions an exception, especially when they involves political bigwigs. Kumar’s conviction, arriving as it did after 34 years, thus stands out as a glaringly indication of the elusive nature of justice and the conditional nature of law and order within our societies. What cannot be ignored, however, is the political ratcheting of the roles of individuals, especially when the accusers themselves are historically alleged as having followed a similar path and resorted to violence against the Sikh community. It is within the light of such political manoeuvrings that people must be reminded of the role of the Sangh Parivar vis-à-vis such violence meted out to Sikhs during 1984.Beyond the Congress and Kumar: Who are the guilty?While championing itself as the voice demanding justice for Sikhs massacred in 1984, the Sangh Parivaar has a less than stellar record of its interactions with the Sikhs of Punjab and, indeed, Delhi. The turbulent times leading up to Operation Blue Star saw the party’s two biggest icons, Lal Krishna Advani and Atal Behari Vajpayee, resort to a sit-in demanding the storming of the Harmandir Sahab. Similarly, Nanaji Deshmukh, a leader of the Jan Sangh and a Bharat Ratna awardee, blamed the then Sikh leadership for the massacres in Delhi. A Hindustan Times report, published on February 2, 2002, noted that 14 FIRs were registered by the Delhi Police, naming 49 BJP and RSS workers, following the recommendations of the Jain-Aggarwal Committee. Some of the names included were close to top figures of the BJP – such as Atal Behari Vajpayee. One such individual was Ram Kumar Jain, whose house doubled as election office for Vajpayee’s camp. Jain was charged with heinous cases including dacoity, rioting and attempt to murder.Remains of a burnt trolley after the pogrom. Photo: Sudesh Vaid, IP College, Delhi.Additionally, FIR 446/93, with 14 accused, dated August 1993, also named BJP workers from areas such as Harinagar, Ashram, Sunlight Colony and Bhagwan Nagar as being involved in the violence against the Sikh community. Chastising the Congress for orchestrating the carnage while conveniently downplaying its own history could not come at a worse time for the BJP leadership, especially when relatively recent events continue to cast an uncomfortable shadow over the party’s commitment to communal justice. Tytler, Kamal Nath and the unresolved casesAdditionally, other key political figures such as Jagdish Tytler and Kamal Nath have not been held accountable for their roles in the pogrom. While Tytler remains implicated in the killings at Gurudwara Pul Bangash, he has also faced allegations of witness intimidation and coercion, while women in Tilak Vihar continue to press for justice. Kamal Nath, on the other hand, remains implicated in the attack at Gurudwara Rakab Ganj that led to the killings of two Sikh gentlemen. There has been little to no progress when it comes to fast-tracking their cases, meaning the aggrieved must continue to oscillate between hope and despair for a justice that may never come. Therefore, while Kumar’s death might in some ways bring temporary closure for certain families – especially those directly affected by his presence and who experienced violence – the requirements of justice demand that registered cases be thoroughly investigated and judgements, wherever applicable, be appropriately analysed. It is useful in this regard to refer to a snapshot of the cases yet to be disposed of by the courts, to comprehend where we truly stand in extending meaningful and lasting justice to the victim-survivors of the pogrom. The PUDR reportThe report ‘Delhi 1984: The Long Aftermath: 41 Years of Criminal Injustice, Apathy and Struggles of Survivors,’ brought out by the People’s Union of Democratic Rights (PUDR) in 2025, puts into perspective the magnitude of the pogrom and the eventual failure of the state in bringing the perpetrators to justice. Out of 2,733 killings, the total number of cases registered were a mere 650, after the recommendations of the Nanavati Commission, constituted in 2000. It is necessary to keep in mind that by the time the Nanavati Commission had made its recommendations, 20 years had passed, and local, regional and national dynamics had changed. It would thus be very difficult to replicate the immediacy of the events of those days or the personnel and political actors involved.Less than one per cent of the FIRs translated into cases heard by the SCOf the 650 FIRs, chargesheets were filed for only 362. For 267, closure reports were filed as untraced, i.e. a situation where the accused could not be identified, with one case remaining unidentified. Of the 362 chargesheets actually filed, 39 resulted in the conviction of 442 people, while the remaining 323 resulted in acquittals. Tellingly, in those 323 cases, the courts refused to frame charges in 51 instances, holding that there was no prima facie material to even initiate trial. In 12 cases, there were appeals filed in the Delhi high court, of which eight were dismissed while four remain pending. Of these, six cases had hearings pending in the Supreme Court at the time of the report’s publication in November 2025. Put into perspective, less than one per cent of the FIRs translated into cases to be heard by the Supreme Court, showcasing how incredibly torturous the effort to secure justice was and continues to be for those women who lost their families.The Dhingra Committee was instituted in 2018 with the mandate of reviewing 199 cases. In its findings, 114 cases were deemed related to the loss of property; here too,102 cases were closed as untraced by the police. There were 31 cases of injuries, 80 persons with more than 150 injuries, of which 26 were closed as untraced. Finally, 54 cases of murder involved 426 people killed and 84 unidentified bodies, leading to only six trials, each one ending in acquittal.In fact, state complicity becomes visible, as the PUDR report reveals that over 100 instances of killings around the Raj Nagar and Palam neighbourhoods – incidentally where Kumar was involved – were all clubbed into a single FIR, No. 416/84. And this was precisely what set the grounds for due process to be violated in any future attempts at diligently rectifying the wrongs done to people. What does justice look like and whose prerogative is it?While Kumar’s death might close an otherwise festering wound for hundreds of families, the magnitude of the violence, violation of the social-contract and the repeated refusal of the state to acknowledge harm done continue to push generations back into despair and anguish. The hundreds of cases that were closed as untraced, or the perfunctory nature of investigations carried out that led to acquittals in court, have irrevocably shaken the faith tens of thousands might have had in established executive and judicial procedures. Kumar’s conviction, coming as it did, after an appeal to the Delhi high court 34 years after the event, raises the question: How many victims were alive to witness the moment? Similarly, his death and the questionable memorialisation by sections of the Congress leadership, as well BJP parliamentarians, followed by sharp public retort, clearly risks reducing justice to political polemics. A burnt autorickshaw and cycle can been seen lying on the ground after the pogrom. Photo: Sudesh Vaid, IP College, Delhi.The criticism by BJP leaders, for one, sits uncomfortably with their history of engaging with Sikhs and, specifically, the relationship of its prominent figures with violence. That cases filed against BJP leaders, or the documentation of their involvement, led nowhere, decades after their appearance in a prestigious national daily such as Hindustan Times, raises questions the BJP would best have forgotten, with the allegations remaining uninvestigated and eventually fading from public memory while the party continues to focus on winning the next political election.So, while the BJP might use this opportunity to seek to apply political-electoral pressure on the Congress, historical records clearly suggest the BJP-RSS faction have much to answer itself.Similarly, the sluggish nature of the judiciary, hindered by the sabotage of the executive, has led to the point where hundreds of cases were declared as untraceable. Neither the legislature – the centre dominated by the BJP for well over a decade – nor the judiciary have developed cohesive, actionable strategies for dispensing justice to people or built a framework to integrate justice and accountability that includes the voices of families, communities and the city that was forever scarred during those fateful days. Clearly, this is not about Kumar, or even the Congress party; neither is it about the political bickering between an ostensibly ‘secular’ and ‘communal’ party, but about reminding people of the stakes involved in ensuring that a country remains substantively, and not cosmetically, secular.Rebuilding trustThe prerogative, then, falls upon conscientious individuals, proactive members of the judiciary and established civil-democratic rights organisations to work in tandem for rebuilding trust among the battered communities. Kumar’s death or the closure of an individual’s life, convicted as he was for heinous crimes, does not make up for continued lapses on the part of every state component. In fact, remaining vigilant against the instrumentalisation of tragedy, trivialisation of people’s loss and cynical abuse of community tragedies is a limited yet powerful contribution, incumbent upon individuals and indeed nations, to ensure that the horrors are never repeated. Paramjeet Singh and Rajarshee Narayan Chowdhury are independent researchers on issues related to civil and democratic rights.