Thirty-four years after the gruesome killings, the Delhi High Court on Monday convicted Congress leader Sajjan Kumar in an anti-Sikh riot case of 1984 and sentenced him to imprisonment for life, holding that the violence was a "crime against humanity" engineered by politicians with assistance from the police.

Setting aside the acquittal of Kumar and five others by a trial court, the court convicted them saying the "criminals" had escaped punishment for over two decades. "This court is of the view that the mass killings of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere in November 1984 were in fact 'crimes against humanity'. They will continue to shock the collective conscience of society," a bench of Justice S Muralidhar and Justice Vinod Goel said.