AMRITSAR: The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee has welcomed the sentencing of Delhi Sikh massacre convict Sajjan Kumar.
In a statement issued from the office, SGPC Chief Secretary Kulwant Singh Mannan said that this decision will provide some reassurance to the victim families who have been waiting for justice for four decades.
He said that thousands of Sikhs were brutally murdered in 1984. This massacre was led by people like Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler, whom the Congress always supported.
He said that the victims of this massacre fought a legal battle for more than 40 years for justice.
He said that it was expected that the culprits would be sentenced to death, but life imprisonment was awarded, which is very less compared to the atrocities committed by the culprits.
He said that the SGPC will continue the legal battle for strict punishment to the culprits.
Manan questioned the Congress leadership for protecting Sajjan Kumar and other perpetrators of the Sikh genocide and said that there should also be a high-level investigation into the role of those who tried to protect the perpetrators of the Sikh genocide from punishment by giving them high positions, so that these perpetrators can also get strict punishment.
Jathedar Baba Balbir Singh Akali 96 Croreri, the head of the Nihang Singhs' apex organisation Shiromani Panth Akali Buddha Dal Panchwan Takht Chanlda Waheer, welcomed the court's decision and called it a "good thing" and called it "late and right". It is worth mentioning here that on October 31, 1984, during the anti-Sikh riots following the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the then Congress MP Sajjan Kumar was convicted in the case related to the murder of Jaswant Singh, Tarundeep Singh and his son in the Saraswati Vihar area on November 1. The honorable court had convicted former MP Sajjan Kumar on February 12 under sections related to rioting, unlawful assembly and murder etc.
Meanwhile in another press release Punjab BJP spokesperson and Sikh thinker Prof. Sarchand Singh Khiala, while commenting on the life imprisonment of former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar by Delhi's Rouse Avenue Court in a 1984 Sikh riots case, said that the convict should have been given the death penalty, he appealed to the Delhi government to take the next step in the High Court to get Sajjan Kumar the death penalty.
Prof. Sarchand Singh said that Sajjan Kumar, who was convicted by the Delhi High Court on December 17, 2018 in the case of burning a gurdwara after killing 5 Sikhs in Palam Colony of Delhi Cantt and is serving a life sentence in Tihar Jail, is now serving a life sentence in the case related to the murder of Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh in Saraswati Vihar, Delhi, making it clear that he was the mastermind in the Sikh massacre, but the Congress party not only protected him by giving him political patronage but also rewarded him with important positions in the government and the party to kill innocent Sikhs.