NEW DELHI, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- A court in India has sentenced a man to death and another for life over the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that left nearly 3,000 people dead, following the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, officials said Wednesday.
The court pronounced the sentences on Tuesday, 34 years after two men were killed by a group of mobs during the riots.
"Additional Sessions Judge Ajay Pandey awarded the death sentence yesterday to 55-year-old Yashpal Singh and a life sentence to 68-year-old Naresh Sherawat, both for murdering two men in south Delhi's Mahipalpur," an official said.
The court also directed the duo to pay a penalty of 49,086 U.S. dollars (3.5 million Indian rupees) each.
The court last week held Naresh and Yashpal guilty of killing Hardev Singh and Avtar Singh on Nov. 1, 1984 during the riots. The convictions followed testimonials of Hardev's brothers Kuldeep Singh and Sangat Singh who had left Delhi with their family in 1985 and are now settled in a Jalandhar village.
Sikhs were targeted in the capital and elsewhere after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by one of her Sikh bodyguards. Gandhi's assassination came four months after the storming by the Indian army of the Golden Temple - the Sikh holy shrine in Punjab's Amritsar, where Sikh militants were fighting for an independent homeland.
The anti-Sikh violence lasted three days, with Hindu mobs hunting down Sikhs across India.
Chief Minister of northern Indian state of Punjab Amarinder Singh welcomed the verdict.
"Welcome the first conviction by a Delhi court in the 1984 riots case. Justice has finally been meted out to the perpetrators of the heinous crimes," Singh said in a statement.
