Sajjan Kumar, 80, declared dead when rushed from Tihar Jail to Safdarjung Hospital on 20 August, was more than just a former Congress Member of Parliament from Outer Delhi. He was a convict, a murderer, and a rioter. That’s the part of the infamous legacy that will stay forever. It can never be erased.
Death brings a sense of finality and is, almost always, accompanied with sadness and pain. There is grief too, heavy and burdensome, unless you are a man named Sajjan Kumar.
Celebrated journalist and author, Khushwant Singh, famed for writing irreverent obituaries that mocked and jeered, once said that obits are the best place to tell the truth, for dead men can’t file libel suits. In the case of Sajjan Kumar, however, the obituary was written in his lifetime, not once but several times.
An Obituary Written in 1984
The obituary was first written in 1984, when thousands of Sikhs were set ablaze in the Capital, soon after the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her bodyguards. For the three days that Delhi billowed with smoke, Kumar was amongst those who had a free run of the streets. He was amongst those responsible for exhorting the crowd and ordering the slaying of innocents only because they were Sikhs.
Parts of his obituary are contained in painful testimonies provided by daughters and wives of those targeted solely for their faith, for the turbans they wore. Their written and oral testimonies sketch the deeds of a man who had not just police protection but political patronage.
The son of a trader, Kumar, who ran a bakery till he joined the Congress and caught the eye of Sanjay Gandhi, Indira’s son. He became a powerful muscleman and the former prime minister’s assassination soon gave him the chance to prove his loyalty. Killing innocents was his way of being noticed; of being politically rewarded.
He was rewarded. Despite his name being repeatedly mentioned in multiple commissions of inquiry by the survivors of the 1984 carnage, the Congress kept allocating the Outer Delhi parliamentary seat to him. He won it for the party for two successive elections—until the outrage and the law slowly caught up with him.
The testimonies were powerful and the witnesses stood steadfast in the face of money and muscle-power. The complainants and their pro-bono lawyer, HS Phoolka, were tireless. They had seen their fathers and sons being mercilessly killed.
Several testimonies stood at the heart of the legal fight. They detailed Sajjan Kumar’s role and they bear reiteration because 1984 will continue to haunt him even in death. There would likely be no obituary for a former MP but for his conviction, which first came in 2018, 34 long years after a young teenager witnessed her father’s death.
The Witnesses Who Would Not Forget
Nirpreet Kaur, only 16 in 1984, remembered and recounted each detail at commissions and in court. “The mob caught hold of my father and sprinkled kerosene over him. They didn’t have a match-box, and a policeman standing there said, ‘Doob maro, tum se ek sardar bhi nahi jalta’ (Shame on you! You people can’t even kill a Sikh),” she told various commissions of enquiry.
She stood resolute against the money and muscle power of Sajjan Kumar and his aides, and is central to any—and all—obituaries on Kumar. She reiterated the same in courts of law. She was an eyewitness and said this again and again, for anyone willing to listen: “I saw Sajjan Kumar standing in a police vehicle telling the mob, ‘Ek bhi sardar zinda nahi bachna chahiye. In sardaron ko maro, inhone hamari maa ko maara hain’ (Don’t spare a single Sikh. Kill them, as they killed our mother).”
I called her soon after Kumar’s death and she said, “I am neither happy nor sad.”
‘You Can’t Buy My Silence’
Jagdish Kaur, another witness, who bore testimony to the death of her husband and son, doesn’t have the time for courtesy or political correctness. Kumar’s name remains a trigger. He triggered her when he was alive and does so, even in death. “How can I forget,” she asks, when I call her a day after Kumar’s passing.
The memories define her life. She was 43 years old in 1984 and is 85 now but the memory is like indelible ink.
The mob marched in and dragged her husband and son out of their home in Raj Nagar in Delhi’s cantonment area. She begged and pleaded but the mob was blood-thirsty. She remembers the fear and the panic.
“The bodies were lying at my door and the house had been ransacked. I used the broken furniture to complete the last rites. There was no way to take the bodies to a crematorium. When Sajjan Kumar learnt that I was testifying, he offered me Rs 2 crore and a plot in Mohali. I told him, you can transfer the entire district of Mohali to my name but I will not backtrack. He increased the amount to Rs 8 crore and all I said was, you have devastated me and my family; may you be equally devastated. He even sent his men to abduct me and I had to leave home and move to Chandigarh for a few months.”Jagdish Kaur
When Justice Took Decades/ A Legacy That Outlived Him
Justice is the hardest wheel to grind and the police made sure Kumar’s name did not find mention in any official complaint. Phoolka once told me, “Whenever it came to commissions of inquiry, Sajjan Kumar’s name appeared prominently, but whenever it went to the police, his name disappeared.”
The men in uniform, obliged to help the process of justice sided with the powerful. They were not just complacent; they were complicit. The daily diaries, meant to record police movement, were totally blank for the three days that Delhi burnt.
Sajjan Kumar’s legacy is bloody and tainted. Several movies, including Jogi, have captured the horror of the carnage. So too have books, including the powerful one titled, ‘The Kaurs of 1984.’ So intertwined are the lives of the survivors, they will always have to be written about, each time Sajjan Kumar’s name is mentioned. His first conviction came in 2018 and the second in 2025. He was awarded a life sentence and was serving time in jail, till he passed, un-mourned, unsung.
Jagdish Kaur wanted him hanged. She remembers breaking down in court when the judge awarded a life sentence. “I’ll hang him, if you can’t,” she said.
He died as a convict and will be remembered as just that: a murderer and a rioter. The courts finally ensured the final words of Sajjan Kumar’s obituary. Ironically, he passed on the day his application for parole (to be with his ailing wife) was to be heard by the Supreme Court.
A nervous Nirpreet Kaur was sitting in the apex court, wondering if he would be granted relief. Instead, came news of Kumar’s death and the memories of 1984 rushed back, with full force, once again.
That is a chapter that will never die.
(Harinder Baweja is a senior journalist and author. She has been reporting on current affairs, with a particular emphasis on conflict, for the last four decades. She can be reached at @shammybaweja on Instagram and X. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)