All decks cleared for “mass killer of Sikhs” Saj­jan Ku­mar to spend the rest of his life in Ti­har prison be­gin­ning New Year 2019.

The Delhi High Court to­day sum­mar­ily re­jected the re­quest for ex­ten­sion of one month to go to prison sought by con­victed Con­gress leader Saj­jan Ku­mar cit­ing shock and fam­ily af­fairs as the rea­sons for seek­ing one months’ time.

The 15-point re­quest filed by Saj­jan Ku­mar yes­ter­day could not con­vince the Delhi High Court to grant him more time. One of the grounds for grace was that he “wants to spend more time with his grand­chil­dren.” Yes­ter­day, ap­pear­ing in the court in per­son, he had sur­ren­dered his mo­bile phone as di­rected by the court in its con­vic­tion or­der.

Hav­ing de­stroyed the lives of hun­dreds of thou­sands of Sikhs, Saj­jan Ku­mar had the temer­ity to seek re­prieve be­cause, “at pre­sent he is un­der shock and sur­prise in view of the or­der of ac­quit­tal hav­ing been set aside and con­vic­tion” and that the “ap­pli­cant be­lieves he is in­no­cent”.

On 17 De­cem­ber, the Delhi High Court had over­turned the or­der of the trial court which had ac­quit­ted Saj­jan Ku­mar and con­victed him for life and ex­tended the prison terms of four other ac­cused.

Though the lawyers of Saj­jan Ku­mar have said that the would chal­lenge the con­vic­tion or­der in the Supreme Court, it ap­pears that the “mass killer of Sikhs”, as de­scribed by vic­tim fam­i­lies will have to spend the rest of his life, be­gin­ning the first day of the New Year 2019 in Ti­har prison.

The Con­gress party has been be­numbed by the judg­ment and so far the In­dian Na­tional Con­gress party chief Rahul Gandhi has re­frained from mak­ing any com­ment. The party has many things to an­swer in­clud­ing the fact that the party had him as a Mem­ber Par­lia­ment even af­ter the full knowl­edge that he had in­sti­gated lumpens and had con­spired to mur­der Sikhs in var­i­ous of the city of Delhi in the first week of No­vem­ber 1984. The party had been overzeal­ous in pro­tect­ing him in the last three decades.

Ace ad­vo­cate Harvin­der Singh Phoolka ap­peared for the vic­tim fam­i­lies and op­posed the re­quest of the lawyers of Saj­jan Ku­mar.