Anti-Sikh riots: SC to hear bail application of Sajjan Kumar in August

The Supreme Court Monday said it would hear in the first week of August the bail application of former Congress leader Sajjan Kumar, who was awarded life term by the Delhi High Court in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case.

The CBI told a bench of Justices S A Bobde and S A Nazeer that offence for which Kumar was convicted was of "gruesome nature" as it was a "genocide".Kumar, 73, who is lodged in jail, had resigned from the Congress party after he was convicted by the high court.

The case in which he was convicted and sentenced relates to the killing of five Sikhs in Delhi Cantonment's Raj Nagar Part-I area of southwest Delhi on November 1-2 in 1984, and burning down of a Gurudwara in Raj Nagar Part-II.Anti-Sikh riots had broken out after the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984 by her two Sikh bodyguards.