The Delhi High Court on Wednesday upheld the five-year jail sentence a lower court had granted to 88 people convicted of involvement in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, News18 reported. A trial court had in 1996 held them guilty of rioting, burning houses and curfew violations in East Delhi’s Trilokpuri area.
Senior advocate HS Phoolka, representing the riot victims, said that according to a first information report filed in the case, 95 people had died in the rioting in Trilokpuri and 100 houses were burnt.
However, only 47 of the 88 convicts are now alive. The Delhi High Court said the 47 convicts will have to surrender. “Their punishment is the same,” Phoolka told reporters outside the court. “They will have to complete their sentence. They have to surrender.”
On November 20, the Patiala House Court in Delhi sentenced to death one of two men found guilty of killing two Sikh men during the riots. It was the first death sentence given in a case related to the 1984 riots.
Some senior Congress leaders stand accused of instigating the riots, in which thousands were killed, after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984.
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