Sajjan Kumar was an Indian politician and former member of the Indian National Congress who was convicted of his role in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Sikhs across India, primarily in Delhi, in three days of violence that represented one of the worst episodes of communal violence in post-independence Indian history. He died in prison in 2026 while serving a life sentence for his role in the killings.
He was born Sajjan Kumar in 1945 in Punjab and became a Congress politician in Delhi, serving in the Parliament of India and building a political career in the factional politics of the Congress organisation in the capital. The 1984 riots, which began on 31 October 1984 following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards and continued for three days before the Indian government deployed the army to restore order, killed between 3,000 and 8,000 Sikhs according to different estimates, with the highest concentrations of violence in working-class neighbourhoods of Delhi where Congress politicians were accused of organising and directing the attacks against Sikh families, homes, and businesses.
The political and judicial accountability for the 1984 riots was one of the most prolonged and contested legal processes in post-independence Indian history, with survivors and human rights organisations pursuing cases against the accused across more than three decades before significant convictions were obtained. The accused included Congress politicians whose protection within the political system that the Congress party dominated for much of the period after 1984 was alleged to have shielded them from prosecution, and the eventual convictions represented both a legal acknowledgement of the crimes committed and a recognition of the extraordinary persistence of the survivors and advocates who had pursued justice for decades.
He was acquitted by lower courts multiple times before the Delhi High Court convicted him in December 2018 on charges related to the killings, sentencing him to life imprisonment for his role in inciting and directing the mob violence against Sikhs in his constituency. The conviction was one of the most significant outcomes of the long judicial process seeking accountability for the 1984 riots and was welcomed by the Sikh community as an acknowledgement of justice long denied, though many survivors and advocates noted that accountability for the full scale of the violence and for all of those responsible remained incomplete.
He died in prison in 2026, having served several years of his life sentence following his conviction by the High Court. For the Sikh community and for those who had pursued accountability for the 1984 violence across more than three decades, his death in custody marked the end of a life that had been defined ultimately by the crimes for which he was held responsible. He died in 2026.