Rahul refuses to comment on Sajjan's conviction

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday refused to comment on the conviction of his party colleague Sajjan Kumar in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case.

"I have made my position on the riots very clear, and I have said this before. This press conference is about the farmers of the country and that Mr. Modi refuses to waive off even one rupee of loan," Gandhi told reporters here when asked to comment on the verdict delivered by the Delhi High Court yesterday.

The bench of Justice S Muralidhar and Justice Vinod Goel overturned a lower court judgement and convicted Kumar in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case sentencing him to life imprisonment.

The court asked the 73-year-old former Member of Parliament (MP) to surrender before December 31. The court also directed him not to leave Delhi and levied a fine of Rs 5 lakh on him.

The case pertains to the murder of five members of a Sikh family in the Delhi Cantonment area during the large-scale violence that occurred following the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984. During four days of carnage, about 2,700 Sikhs were killed in the national capital alone.

In 2013, the Karkardooma trial court had acquitted Kumar in the case and convicted five others. The appeal against the said order was filed by those convicted in the case, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the family of victims.