We must all thank Akalpu­rakh for this. Jus­tice af­ter 34 years brings so­lace and a lit­tle peace. Sikhs across the world feel sat­is­fied that Saj­jan Ku­mar has been or­dered to be im­pris­oned in Man­doli jail af­ter sur­ren­der­ing at the Karkar­dooma courts in Delhi with ac­com­plices Mo­hin­der Ya­dav and Kr­is­han Khokhar. The jour­ney of jus­tice is still on. Shar­ing his feel­ings, for­mer jour­nal­ist-turned-Delhi leg­is­la­tor Jar­nail Singh echoes Sikh fears and hopes.

On the oc­ca­sion of the 25th an­niver­sary of the Delhi car­nage, when as a Dainik Ja­gran jour­nal­ist I flung a shoe at the then In­dian Home Min­is­ter and Con­gress leader Pala­niap­pan Chi­dambaram, World Sikh News ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh wrote an Open let­ter to the Shoe, in which he said, “We love you for you have achieved what years of le­gal wran­gling and ex­ec­u­tive pre­var­i­ca­tion could not do.  The gen­tle toss from the gen­tle­manly Jar­nail Singh’s feet to the vicin­ity of In­dian Home Min­is­ter P. Chi­dambaram has im­mor­tal­ized you. In two and half me­tres you trav­elled twenty-five years.”

“In two and half me­tres Jar­nail Singh’s shoe trav­elled twenty-five years.”

My shoe got its vic­tims. The Con­gress party had to delete the names of those of its can­di­dates who were guilty of be­ing ac­com­plices and per­pe­tra­tors of the No­vem­ber 1984 mas­sacre.  I have al­ways felt that it was not just the shoe but the col­lec­tive ex­pres­sion of grief and anger of whole Sikh com­mu­nity which nailed the Con­gress gov­ern­ment.

 Read WSN Ed­i­tor's Open Let­ter to the Shoe of Jar­nail Singh

I was con­scious that my unique protest as a jour­nal­ist dur­ing the press meet, when the In­dian home min­is­ter gave a clean chit to the killers, was likely to af­fect the po­lit­i­cal ca­reers of dreaded crim­i­nals like Saj­jan Ku­mar and Jagdish Tytler on the leash, but I was not sure that the wheels of jus­tice will turn full cir­cle and Saj­jan Ku­mar will be sen­tenced for life and shown the road to Ti­har.

 Read the re­ply of The Shoe of Jar­nail Singh

To be hon­est, this seems a dream. I had lost faith in the jus­tice sys­tem, when as an 11 year old I saw my school and neigh­bour­hood Gur­d­wara Sahib burnt in front of my eyes. How could I for­get that my po­lio-stricken dis­abled el­der brother was badly beaten up and my dy­ing un­cle was re­fused treat­ment by doc­tors at a hos­pi­tal, who did not want to treat a Sikh? The lit­ter flicker of hope against hope was fur­ther ex­tin­guished upon see­ing the erring and con­spir­ing Delhi po­lice cops pay­ing obei­sance to killers-turned-cab­i­net min­is­ters.

The prime rea­son be­hind the sym­bolic protest at the Con­gress head­quar­ters dur­ing a press con­fer­ence was to re­in­force that the Sikhs of Guru Gob­ind Singh had not for­got­ten the No­vem­ber 1984 car­nage. Even if jus­tice had not been done, the spirit to protest was still alive and kick­ing was the mes­sage that had to be con­veyed! The shoe that I flung at the home min­is­ter brought the Con­gress to its knees and many Con­gress­men could be seen hang­ing their heads in shame!

Prior to the 2009 gen­eral elec­tions to the In­dian Par­lia­ment, In­di­a’s lead­ing in­ves­tiga­tive agency, the Cen­tral Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion (CBI) ab­solved Jagdish Tytler of all charges and ex­pressed its in­abil­ity to pur­sue the case against Saj­jan Ku­mar. How­ever the protest brought about a change of mind. Dr Man­mo­han Singh’s soul stirred up and the CBI ini­ti­ated steps to con­tact No­vem­ber 1984 wit­nesses.

Jagsher Singh and Jagdish Kaur were added as wit­nesses in 2010 and the charge sheet was filed. In just about three years, in 2013, the trial court sen­tenced five of the six ac­cused. Three were sen­tenced to life and the two oth­ers were handed jail terms of three years each. Saj­jan Ku­mar sur­vived sen­tenc­ing as the judge set him free on tech­ni­cal grounds.

I was forced to pon­der, “Is it not the same Saj­jan Ku­mar who has es­caped pun­ish­ment but it was he who had or­gan­ised mass killings of the Sikhs and also dis­trib­uted largesse to those who en­gi­neered and ex­e­cuted the killings.” I could not help but re­call that it is the same Saj­jan Ku­mar who had kid­napped and trapped po­lice per­son­nel who had gone to his res­i­dence to ar­rest him dur­ing the course of the court pro­ceed­ings.

Though the Sikh spirit does not seek re­venge, but jus­tice has to be a call for all right think­ing in­di­vid­u­als and that is what the vic­tim fam­i­lies, Sikhs and their lawyers are con­sis­tently do­ing.

I sensed that Saj­jan Ku­mar was mor­tally afraid of the noose and was ac­tu­ally “dy­ing every mo­ment.” A Con­gress party per­son close to Saj­jan Ku­mar and Jagdish Tytler, con­fided in me that they could be heard mur­mur­ing with a heavy heart, “this Sar­dar has en­trapped us.”

I sensed that Saj­jan Ku­mar was mor­tally afraid of the noose and was ac­tu­ally “dy­ing every mo­ment.”

When the Delhi High Court sen­tenced Saj­jan Ku­mar for life, my be­ing could not help but re­store, a lit­tle faith in des­tiny do­ing jus­tice. Bet­ter late than never! How of­ten did I feel bar­ren­ness in life be­cause of be­ing per­ceived as a stranger and al­ways feel­ing like a sec­ond-class cit­i­zen? This was even worse than the slav­ery of the British, but all these years we lived through this.

The Delhi High Court has not merely sent one leader and his paid lumpens to life im­pris­on­ment; it serves as a warn­ing to all those in­di­vid­u­als and po­lit­i­cal par­ties, who in­dulge in hate pol­i­tics and who maim and kill sec­tions of pop­u­la­tions, par­tic­u­larly mi­nori­ties, for elec­toral pur­poses.

 Delhi High Court Judge­ment con­vict­ing Saj­jan Ku­mar and oth­ers

This judge­ment will in­still fear into the hearts and minds of such killers and con­spir­a­tors that neme­sis can catch up even af­ter 34 years! I hope and pray that this judge­ment would pro­vide some so­lace to the hun­dreds of thou­sands of wid­ows whose tears have still not dried up.

Un­ques­tion­ably, the or­der is a mile­stone in the his­tory of jus­tice for vic­tims of geno­cide and it is for the first time that Jus­tice Dr S Murlid­har and Jus­tice Vinod Goel of the Delhi High Court have writ­ten the or­der in an in­ter­na­tional lan­guage re­fer­ring to phrases like, “crimes against hu­man­ity” which is  rare and path-break­ing.

“Jus­tice Dr S Murlid­har and Jus­tice Vinod Goel of the Delhi High Court have writ­ten the or­der in an in­ter­na­tional lan­guage re­fer­ring to phrases like, “crimes against hu­man­ity” which is  rare and path-break­ing. The In­dian ju­di­ciary still has a long way to go.”

As the judge­ment de­tails and Saj­jan Ku­mar in Ti­har jail sinks in, it is time to frame new laws and seek stricter im­ple­men­ta­tion of ex­ist­ing laws for such or­gan­ised vi­o­lence as hap­pened in No­vem­ber 1984, Gu­jarat 2002 and Mum­bai 2003, not to ig­nore the reg­u­lar hate-crimes against mi­nori­ties in states like Ut­tar Pradesh.

The law mak­ers of the coun­try will do well to ex­am­ine the judge­ment in de­tail and ful­fill In­di­a’s in­ter­na­tional com­mit­ment by in­cor­po­rat­ing “crimes against hu­man­ity”, “geno­cide” and the like into In­dian laws.

Many laws in­clud­ing the pro­pos­als for com­bat­ing com­mu­nal vi­o­lence are pend­ing since 2004. The re­spon­si­bil­ity of the po­lice and bu­reau­cratic ad­min­is­tra­tion must be clearly laid down. The 232 crim­i­nal cases that have been closed with­out proper pur­suance by the po­lice must be re­opened and the guilty brought to jus­tice. The leader con­spir­a­tors lurk­ing around must face trial. The then Con­gress lead­er­ship must be tried posthu­mously too.

The scars of in­jus­tice will not van­ish so eas­ily but jus­tice can pro­vide some so­lace. The In­dian ju­di­ciary still has a long way to go.