New Delhi, 20 August

The Supreme Court on Wednesday deferred to 24 September the hearing on the pleas filed by former Congress leader Sajjan Kumar and the party's former councillor Balwan Khokhar against sentences awarded in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case.

A bench of Justices JK Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi deferred the matter as Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, for CBI, was not available.

In July, 2024, the apex court asked the CBI to respond to Khokhar's plea seeking the reprieve.

Khokhar's life sentence was upheld by the Delhi High Court in 2018 whereas it reversed Kumar's acquittal by a trial court in 2013, in a case related to the killings of five Sikhs in the Raj Nagar Part-I area in Palam Colony in southwest Delhi on 1-2 November, 1984, apart from the setting ablaze of a gurdwara in Raj Nagar Part-II.

In his plea, Khokhar said the jail authorities had rejected his plea for furlough on 26 September, 2024, saying his release would invite adverse repercussions and disturb peace and tranquillity in the society, prompting unrest.

He said he had moved a bail plea and had already undergone a 8.7 years' sentence but the plea was dismissed by a court on 3 February, 2023.

Large-scale violence and killings of persons from the Sikh community took place in the national capital following former PM Indira Gandhi's assassination by her bodyguards in 1984 and the cases stemming from the incident have seen some major twists and turns 40 years on.