The Supreme Court on Friday rejected former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar’s bail plea in connection with the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case, reported Bar and Bench. In 2018, Kumar was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the violence.

“It is not a small case,” said a three-judge bench of Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian. “We cannot grant bail.”

Kumar had filed the bail plea citing medical reasons. The court added that the former Congress MP cannot continue to stay in hospital when his medical reports mention that there was no need for it.

The bench said Kumar’s appeal against his conviction and life sentence will be heard when courts reopen for physical hearings. He had moved the top court against the Delhi High Court’s judgement.

In December 2018, the Delhi High Court had sentenced Kumar to life imprisonment, and held him guilty of murder, promoting enmity between groups, and defiling public property. The High Court verdict had reversed a lower court’s 2013 ruling that had acquitted Kumar. He was sent to jail after he surrendered before a trial court on December 31. Kumar resigned from the Congress after his conviction.

Riots broke out in New 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, began attacking Sikhs and torching their homes. Nearly 3,000 Sikhs were murdered in Delhi alone.