Delayed Justice and Fragile Memory: The Acquittal of Sajjan Kumar in a 1984 Anti‑Sikh Riots Case

Introduction

The recent acquittal of former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar by a Delhi court in a Janakpuri–Vikaspuri 1984 anti‑Sikh riots case once again exposes the structural frailties of India’s criminal justice response to mass violence. Over four decades after the pogroms that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, courts are still adjudicating individual responsibility. In this particular prosecution, the trial court found that the evidentiary edifice simply could not bear the weight of time: most prosecution witnesses were hearsay; key alleged eyewitnesses either failed to name Kumar for nearly thirty years or displayed serious inconsistencies. The court consequently held that the prosecution had not established guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

The decision must be read against the backdrop of the Delhi High Court’s 2018 judgment in State (CBI) v Sajjan Kumar & Ors, which had reversed an earlier acquittal and convicted Kumar for conspiracy, abetment, murder, and promoting enmity in another 1984 case concerning killings in Raj Nagar, Palam Colony. Together, these two strands of jurisprudence highlight the narrow factual thresholds that still decide accountability for mass crimes in India, in the absence of a dedicated legal framework for crimes against humanity.

Legal Background

The Janakpuri–Vikaspuri case, as reported, concerned allegations that Sajjan Kumar had incited violence against Sikhs during the 1984 riots. The prosecution examined 18 witnesses, nine of whom were projected as eyewitnesses. The court, however, concluded that their evidence suffered from critical deficiencies: long delays in naming the accused, internal contradictions, and an overarching reliance on hearsay narratives.

Legally, the charges fall within the Indian Penal Code 1860 (IPC), particularly provisions on murder (s.302), rioting (ss.147–148), unlawful assembly and common object (s.149), mischief by fire (s.436), promoting enmity on grounds of religion (s.153A) and related abetment (s.109). In the 2018 CBI case, the Delhi High Court had already convicted Sajjan Kumar of criminal conspiracy under s.120B IPC read with, inter alia, ss.302, 436, 153A and 295, as well as abetment under s.109, after an exhaustive reassessment of eyewitness testimony and the broader investigative history.

The law of conspiracy, detailed in cases such as State v Nalini (1999) 5 SCC 253, treats agreement to pursue a criminal design as a substantive offence; it is distinct from the underlying crimes of murder or rioting. Equally relevant are evidential principles around delayed statements and hostile or vulnerable witnesses. The Supreme Court in Prithipal Singh v State of Punjab (2012) 1 SCC 10 and Zahira Habibullah Sheikh v State of Gujarat (2006) 3 SCC 374 has emphasised that extraordinary situations—custodial killings, communal pogroms—demand a contextual approach to delay, fear and witness protection.

Critical Analysis

The present acquittal turns largely on the trial court’s assessment of witness credibility in a setting where the events occurred over 40 years ago. On the reported facts, the core defects the court appears to have identified are:

1. **Predominantly hearsay testimony**: Many witnesses recounted what they had heard others say about Sajjan Kumar’s role, rather than what they themselves saw or heard him do. Under the Indian Evidence Act 1872, such hearsay is generally inadmissible to prove the truth of the allegation, unless it falls within a recognised exception.

2. **Prolonged delay in naming the accused**: Several alleged eyewitnesses did not mention Sajjan Kumar in their earliest complaints or statements. His name surfaced decades later, often in affidavits before commissions of inquiry or during CBI reinvestigation. While the Delhi High Court in State (CBI) v Sajjan Kumar grappled with precisely this issue—and was prepared, in that case, to treat the delay as explicable given the climate of fear—the present trial court appears to have taken a stricter view, considering the delay fatal when unaccompanied by cogent explanation or contemporaneous corroboration.

3. **Internal inconsistency and loss of detail**: The court reportedly found that some witnesses varied materially between their earlier versions and their evidence in court, including on crucial aspects such as whether they actually saw Kumar at the relevant place and time. After such a lapse of time, memory degradation is to be expected; but where the only link to the accused is delayed and inconsistent identification, the standard of proof “beyond reasonable doubt” becomes difficult to satisfy.

This outcome sits uneasily beside the Delhi High Court’s 2018 judgment, which described the 1984 violence as “crimes against humanity” and castigated systemic investigative failures. In State (CBI) v Sajjan Kumar, the High Court painstakingly reconstructed the investigative record, exposed attempts by local police and the Riot Cell to dilute or erase incriminating material, and ultimately credited the perseverance of a handful of eyewitnesses who had named Sajjan Kumar consistently once they felt able to speak. That conviction was anchored in specific factual matrices: detailed accounts of public speeches, directions to mobs, and corroborative documentary material.

In contrast, in the Janakpuri–Vikaspuri case, the trial court found that the evidentiary matrix did not rise above reasonable doubt. From a doctrinal standpoint, this is not inconsistent: each prosecution must succeed or fail on its own record; prior convictions cannot substitute for proof of guilt in a separate incident. The principle against propensity reasoning—convicting because an accused is “the sort of person who would do it”—remains fundamental.

However, the acquittal does underline structural weaknesses in prosecuting historic mass-atrocity cases within an ordinary criminal law framework designed for discrete, contemporaneously investigated offences:

- **Dependence on frail human memory**: By the time cases reach trial, witnesses are elderly, traumatised, or have died. In the CBI case, the High Court accepted that trauma, fear and lack of witness protection explained long silence; but not every trial court will be prepared to do so in the absence of robust corroboration.

- **Absence of a crimes‑against‑humanity framework**: Indian criminal law does not recognise “crimes against humanity” or “genocide” as autonomous offences. As the Delhi High Court observed in 2018, this forces courts to treat coordinated pogroms as aggregates of individual murders, arsons and riots, severed from their systematic character. That, in turn, exacerbates evidential fragmentation.

- **Investigative and institutional delay**: The Janakpuri–Vikaspuri prosecution, like many 1984 cases, was shaped by initial police inertia, flawed Riot Cell inquiries, and late-stage CBI intervention. As in State (CBI) v Sajjan Kumar, closure reports, missing complaints and manipulated statements weakened the evidentiary trail long before trial.

Opinion & Outlook

From a legal policy perspective, the acquittal should not be read narrowly as a vindication of innocence or a repudiation of the High Court’s earlier findings in a different case. Rather, it demonstrates the limits of what conventional criminal procedure can achieve when confronted with mass crimes investigated belatedly and unevenly.

On the law of evidence, the judgment is a reminder that courts will remain cautious about delayed, uncorroborated naming of accused persons, particularly where the accused already carries the burden of prior convictions or notoriety. While higher courts have endorsed a contextual, victim‑centric approach to delay in cases of communal violence (see Prithipal Singh and the Bilkis Bano litigation), they have not diluted the core standard of proof. Trial courts, confronted with contradictory testimony and significant hearsay, will continue to acquit where the evidential gap is too wide.

The broader difficulty lies in the absence of a tailored legislative framework for crimes against humanity. The Delhi High Court in State (CBI) v Sajjan Kumar urged that this lacuna be addressed, noting that international law has long moved towards specialised treatment of systematic attacks on civilian populations. Without such a framework, Indian courts must shoehorn pogroms into IPC categories drafted for ordinary homicide and rioting, and cannot easily capture patterns of orchestrated violence, institutional collusion, or command responsibility.

Looking ahead, several measures merit serious consideration:

1. **Enacting a Crimes Against Humanity statute** that defines and criminalises widespread or systematic attacks on civilians, incorporates modes of liability such as superior responsibility, and expressly provides that delays in investigation—where attributable to State inaction or fear—do not automatically defeat prosecution.

2. **Strengthening witness protection and support** in legacy cases, drawing on the Supreme Court’s witness protection guidelines and practices from the 2002 Gujarat prosecutions, so that vulnerable witnesses can give coherent evidence without intimidation.

3. **Institutionalising independent review of riot investigations**, perhaps via standing special investigation units insulated from local political pressures, to prevent the pattern of superficial inquiries and problematic closure reports documented in the 1984 jurisprudence.

Conclusion

The Janakpuri–Vikaspuri acquittal of Sajjan Kumar is not a legal anomaly so much as a symptom of a system struggling to retrofit ordinary criminal procedure onto extraordinary mass crimes decades after the fact. Where evidence is fragmentary, delayed and internally inconsistent, acquittal is the legally orthodox outcome. Yet, juxtaposed with the Delhi High Court’s earlier conviction of the same individual in a separate 1984 case and its characterisation of those events as crimes against humanity, the decision underscores an urgent need for legislative and institutional reform. Unless India develops a coherent domestic framework for prosecuting systemic communal violence, the pursuit of accountability for historic atrocities will continue to depend on the fortuity of surviving witnesses and the happenstance of investigative diligence in individual cases.