New Delhi: Congress leader Sajjan Kumar has written to party president Rahul Gandhi submitting his resignation from the primary membership of the party.
On Monday, the Delhi high court convicted Kumar for his role in the 1984 Sikh killings and sentenced him to imprisonment for life. The bench reversed the judgment of the trial court that acquitted him in 2013.
Kumar has been found guilty of murder, promoting enmity between groups and defiling public property, and asked to surrender by December 31, 2018.
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“I tender my resignation with immediate effect from the primary membership of the Indian National Congress in the wake of the judgement of the hon’be high court of Delhi against me,” he said in the letter to Gandhi.
Delhi Cantonment, one of the 21 assembly segments that constituted Outer Delhi, which was then represented by Sajjan Kumar as MP, witnessed widespread violence after Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984. As many as 341 Sikhs were killed there. Of these, five Sikhs were killed in Raj Nagar Part I area of Palam Colony. Kumar’s conviction by the Delhi high court has come in the case related to their killing and the burning down of a gurdwara there.
(With PTI inputs)