For families ravaged by 1984 riots, justice comes four decades too late

Survivors say Sajjan Kumar's conviction is a good step, but does little to assuage their decades of suffering

- Jignasa Sinha

NEW DELHI: Kuldeep Kaur, 73, was in her 30s when she watched, in horror, her husband being burnt alive in Nangloi during the anti-Sikh riots that ravaged parts of Delhi in November 1984. In four decades since, every time a newspaper report or a news channel ticker even mentions what unfolded in the streets of Delhi those three days, she weeps for herself, her dead husband, and the hundreds of strangers who lost their families.

On Wednesday, as a Delhi court convicted former Congress parliamentarian Sajjan Kumar in an anti-Sikh riots case for instigating a mob to kill Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh and his son in Delhi's Saraswati Vihar on November 1, 1984, Kaur wept again.