The Supreme Court said on Monday that it would hear former Congress leader Sajjan Kumar’s bail application in the 1984 anti-Sikh violence case in August.
The CBI told the top court that the offence of which Kumar was convicted was of “gruesome nature” as it was a “genocide”.
The bench said it will hear the plea in the first week of August.
Kumar has also challenged in the top court the Delhi High Court’s verdict of December 17 last year that awarded him life imprisonment for the “remainder of his natural life” in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case.
Earlier, Supreme Court judge Justice Sanjiv Khanna had recused himself from hearing Sajjan Kumar’s plea. The bench had then ordered that the plea of Kumar be listed before an appropriate bench to which Justice Khanna was not part and adjourned.
Kumar had surrendered before a trial court here on December 31, last year to serve the sentence in pursuance of the high court’s December 17 verdict.
The case in which Kumar was convicted and sentenced relates to the killing of five Sikhs in Delhi Cantonment’s Raj Nagar Part-I area of southwest Delhi in November 1984 and burning down of a Gurudwara in Raj Nagar.
The anti-Sikh riots broke out after the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984, by her two Sikh bodyguards.
