Congress MP Sajjan Kumar has resigned as the chairman
of the Rural Development Board

New Delhi, August 11, 2005
NDTV Correspondent

Congress MP Sajjan Kumar has resigned as the chairman of the Rural Development Board, a post he held in the Delhi government.

Kumar is the second Congress MP to resign in the wake of the tabling of Nanavati Commission report in Parliament.

Union Minister for NRI Affairs Jagdish Tytler resigned last night.

Left unhappy

The Congress has been under immense pressure from the opposition and its own allies to take action against those named by the Nanavati Commission that investigated the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

The riot branch of the Delhi Police will re-investigate the cases.

However, the Communist allies of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are not so pleased and are looking beyond the resignations.

Nilotpal Basu, a CPI M leader said, the government would have to spell out how it would deal with Kumar and Tytler - to prove the government has played a constructive role.

Sajjan Kumar Acquitted in 1984 Sikh Massacres Case

New Delhi, Dec. 24, 2002
The Hindu,

 

"A Delhi court today acquitted the former Congress Member of Parliament from Outer Delhi, Sajjan Kumar, and a former Congress M.L.A., Jaikishan, in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case. With this, he has been acquitted in all the three anti-Sikh riot cases registered against him following an inquiry by a Judicial Commission. The riots broke out in the Capital in the wake of the former Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi's assassination on Oct. 31, 1984. Acquitting the Congress leader and 10 of his co-accused, the Additional Sessions judge, Manju Goel, said: 'The prosecution (C.B.I.) has miserably failed to prove the case against them.' There was no eyewitness in the case and neither was the prosecution able to present an unbroken chain of circumstantial evidence to make out a foolproof case. Fourteen persons were accused in the case. Three of them died during the trial."
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"Quoting a relevant paragraph of the statement recorded by Anwar Kaur, based on which the Delhi Police had registered the case, Ms. Goel said that Ms. Kaur was not sure whether Mr. Kumar was leading the mob which lynched her husband, Nevin Singh, at Sultanpuri in West Delhi on Nov. 1, 1984. Ms. Kaur had, in her statement, said that a mob instigated by Mr. Kumar had killed her husband in front of her residence. 'The mob set my house on fire, dragged my husband out and then the accused, Nathu Pradhan and others, hit him with lathis [bamboo staffs] causing his death. The mob then put my bedding on the body and set it ablaze,' Ms. Kaur told the court."