A Delhi court on Wednesday convicted former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar for the murder of two men during the 1984 anti-Sikh violence, Bar and Bench reported.

Special Judge Kaveri Baweja of the Rouse Avenue Court passed the order and said that arguments on the quantum of sentence will take place on February 18, the Hindustan Times reported.

Large-scale riots broke out in Delhi on October 31, 1984, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, who was then the prime minister, by her Sikh bodyguards. Mobs, allegedly helped by some Congress leaders, had attacked Sikhs and torched their homes. Nearly 3,000 Sikhs were killed in Delhi alone.

In the case related to Kumar’s conviction, the family members of those who died – Jaswant Singh and his son Tarun Deep Singh – had alleged that a mob led by him burnt the two men alive on November 1, 1984 in the Saraswati Vihar area.

They also alleged that Kumar, who was then the Outer Congress MP for Outer Delhi, “instigated and abetted the unruly mob” which set their house on fire.

The police had filed the first information report in the case on September 9, 1985. In 1994, the case was closed after the court held that evidence collected was not sufficient to initiate prosecution against any person.

It was then reopened in 2015 by a three-member Special Investigation Team formed to re-investigate the anti-Sikh violence cases.

In 2021, the Rouse Avenue Court had charged Kumar with rioting and murder in the case. It had observed that on a preliminary reading, Kumar was not only “a participant of the mob but also led it” during the murder of Jaswant Singh and Tarun Deep Singh.

Kumar was already in prison serving a life sentence in another anti-Sikh violence case when he was arrested in this case on April 6, 2021. In December 2018, the Delhi High Court had held him guilty of murder, promoting enmity between groups, and defiling public property.