The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider Congress leader Sajjan Kumar’s bail plea for an urgent hearing. Kumar was sentenced for life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case.

We will see to it, a bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said when lawyers for Kumar prayed for urgent listing of the bail application. Kumar had earlier moved the top court challenging the conviction and award of life imprisonment by the high court. He has also sought bail during the pendency of his appeal in the apex 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.

The high court had convicted and sentenced Kumar to spend the remainder of his life in jail for the offences of criminal conspiracy and abetment in commission of crimes of murder, promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of communal harmony and defiling and destruction of a gurudwara.

—India Legal Bureau